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Metabolic engineering

The sweet smell of biosynthesis

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Metabolically engineered cells are yielding an expansion of specialty chemicals that rival or supplement traditional petroleum-derived chemicals. New results establish a biosynthetic route to volatile esters and larger acetate esters equivalent in size to biodiesel, providing an intriguing new direction to create fragrances, chemicals or fuels.

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Figure 1: Comparison of the final step in two different biosynthetic routes capable of producing a biodiesel equivalent product in E. coli.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Brett M. Barney is at the Department of Bioproducts and Biosystems Engineering, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, Minnesota, USA.,

    Brett M Barney

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  1. Brett M Barney
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Correspondence to Brett M Barney.

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The author declares no competing financial interests.

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Barney, B. The sweet smell of biosynthesis. Nat Chem Biol 10, 246–247 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nchembio.1480

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