Abstract
Recycling of carbon dioxide (CO2) into fuels and chemicals is a potential approach to reduce CO2 emission and fossil-fuel consumption. Autotrophic microbes can utilize energy from light, hydrogen, or sulfur to assimilate atmospheric CO2 into organic compounds at ambient temperature and pressure. This provides a feasible way for biological production of fuels and chemicals from CO2 under normal conditions. Recently great progress has been made in this research area, and dozens of CO2-derived fuels and chemicals have been reported to be synthesized by autotrophic microbes. This is accompanied by investigations into natural CO2-fixation pathways and the rapid development of new technologies in synthetic biology. This review first summarizes the six natural CO2-fixation pathways reported to date, followed by an overview of recent progress in the design and engineering of CO2-fixation pathways as well as energy supply patterns using the concept and tools of synthetic biology. Finally, we will discuss future prospects in biological fixation of CO2.
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Gong, F., Cai, Z. & Li, Y. Synthetic biology for CO2 fixation. Sci. China Life Sci. 59, 1106–1114 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11427-016-0304-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11427-016-0304-2