The DOI matches its Crossref record; 32 of the 32 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Non-fermentative pathways for synthesis of branched-chain higher alcohols as biofuels
Abstract
Global energy and environmental problems have stimulated increased efforts towards synthesizing biofuels from renewable resources. Compared to the traditional biofuel, ethanol, higher alcohols offer advantages as gasoline substitutes because of their higher energy density and lower hygroscopicity. In addition, branched-chain alcohols have higher octane numbers compared with their straight-chain counterparts. However, these alcohols cannot be synthesized economically using native organisms. Here we present a metabolic engineering approach using Escherichia coli to produce higher alcohols including isobutanol, 1-butanol, 2-methyl-1-butanol, 3-methyl-1-butanol and 2-phenylethanol from glucose, a renewable carbon source. This strategy uses the host's highly active amino acid biosynthetic pathway and diverts its 2-keto acid intermediates for alcohol synthesis. In particular, we have achieved high-yield, high-specificity production of isobutanol from glucose. The strategy enables the exploration of biofuels beyond those naturally accumulated to high quantities in microbial fermentation.
Overview
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
In the citing paper
“The cyanobacterial cumulative titre of 1247 mg/L over 58 days equates to approximately 21.5 mg L−1 d−1 average daily productivity, compared to approximately 10,900 mg L−1 d−1 for E. coli—a several-hundred-fold difference reflecting light-dependent growth constraints rather than poor pathway design.”
From Cyanobacteria as a Photosynthetic Chassis for Metabolic Pathway Engineering with Heterologous Gene Expression (2026) · cites this paper as [175]
In the citing paper
“The longer chain alcohols possess higher energy content and can be stored and transported easier than ethanol (Atsumi et al. 2008).”
From Renewable energy from Cyanobacteria: energy production optimization by metabolic pathway engineering (2011) · cites this paper as Atsumi et al. 2008
In the citing paper
“The production of longer chain alcohols (C5–C–8) in E. coli bacteria has been achieved by the overproduction of 2-keto acids, intermediates of the amino acid biosynthesis. These intermediates were later converted to butanol derivatives by the heterologous expression of 2-keto acid decarboxylase and alcohol dehydrogenase (Atsumi et al. 2008; Zhang et al. 2008).”
From Renewable energy from Cyanobacteria: energy production optimization by metabolic pathway engineering (2011) · cites this paper as Atsumi et al. 2008
In the citing paper
“It is difficult to identify a microorganism suitable to produce C5 and other C4 substituted alcohols from sugar glucose while minimising the steps in the process and making it cost effective [141].”
From Investigation of Biofuel as a Potential Renewable Energy Source (2021) · cites this paper as [141]
Citations
Cites
Cox, B. M., Opheim, K. E., Teschemacher, H., & D, A. G. M. (1975) · Life Sciences · doi:10.1016/0024-3205(75)90272-6 · Cited by 1,708
Lutz, R. (1997) · Nucleic Acids Research · doi:10.1093/nar/25.6.1203 · Cited by 1,694
Engineering Yeast Transcription Machinery for Improved Ethanol Tolerance and Production
Alper, H., Moxley, J., Nevoigt, E., Fink, G. R., & Stephanopoulos, G. (2006) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.1131969 · Cited by 823
Improving lycopene production in Escherichia coli by engineering metabolic control
Farmer, W. R., & Liao, J. C. (2000) · Nature Biotechnology · doi:10.1038/75398 · Cited by 525
Self-citationBalancing a heterologous mevalonate pathway for improved isoprenoid production in Escherichia coli
Pitera, D. J., Paddon, C. J., Newman, J. D., & Keasling, J. D. (2006) · Metabolic Engineering · doi:10.1016/j.ymben.2006.11.002 · Cited by 440
The Catabolism of Amino Acids to Long Chain and Complex Alcohols in Saccharomyces cerevisiae
Dickinson, J. R., Salgado, L. E. J., & Hewlins, M. J. E. (2003) · Journal of Biological Chemistry · doi:10.1074/jbc.m211914200 · Cited by 375
Enteric Bacterial Catalysts for Fuel Ethanol Production
Ingram, L. O., Aldrich, H. C., Borges, A., Causey, T. B., Martı́nez, A., Martínez‐Morales, F., Saleh, A. Z., Underwood, S. A., Yomano, L. P., York, S. W., et al. (1999) · Biotechnology Progress · doi:10.1021/bp9901062 · Cited by 272
Metabolic engineering for drug discovery and development
Khosla, C., & Keasling, J. D. (2003) · Nature Reviews Drug Discovery · doi:10.1038/nrd1256 · Cited by 208
Vuralhan, Z., de Morais, M. A., Tai, S. L., Piper, M. D. W., & Pronk, J. T. (2003) · Applied and Environmental Microbiology · doi:10.1128/aem.69.8.4534-4541.2003 · Cited by 206
Nucleotide sequence of the yeast alcohol dehydrogenase II gene.
Russell, D. W., Smith, M. J., Williamson, V. M., & Young, E. T. (1983) · Journal of Biological Chemistry · doi:10.1016/s0021-9258(18)32979-x · Cited by 205
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Engineering the third wave of biocatalysis
Bornscheuer, U. T., Huisman, G. W., Kazlauskas, R. J., Lutz, S., Moore, J. C., & Robins, K. T. (2012) · Nature · doi:10.1038/nature11117 · Cited by 2,649
Automated design of synthetic ribosome binding sites to control protein expression
Salis, H. M., Mirsky, E. A., & Voigt, C. A. (2009) · Nature Biotechnology · doi:10.1038/nbt.1568 · Cited by 1,844
Synthetic biology: applications come of age
Khalil, A. S., & Collins, J. J. (2010) · Nature Reviews Genetics · doi:10.1038/nrg2775 · Cited by 1,413
Multigene editing in the Escherichia coli genome via the CRISPR-Cas9 system
Jiang, Y., Chen, B., Duan, C., Sun, B., Yang, J., & Yang, S. (2015) · Applied and Environmental Microbiology · doi:10.1128/aem.04023-14 · Cited by 1,362
Microbial production of fatty-acid-derived fuels and chemicals from plant biomass
Steen, E. J., Kang, Y., Bokinsky, G., Hu, Z., Schirmer, A., McClure, A., del Cardayré, S. B., & Keasling, J. D. (2010) · Nature · doi:10.1038/nature08721 · Cited by 1,338
Metadata
- Authors
- Atsumi, S., Hanai, T., & Liao, J. C.
- Affiliations
- University of California, Los Angeles (US)
- Corresponding author
- Liao, James C.
- Venue
- Nature
- Published
- 2008-01
- Volume
- 451
- Issue
- 7174
- Pages
- 86-89
- ISSN
- 0028-0836 (ISSN-L)
- 1476-4687
- OpenAlex
- W1978119727
- Cited by
- 1,945
- References
- 32
- Citations by year
- 2026: 50 · 2025: 55 · 2024: 66 · 2023: 72 · 2022: 113 · 2021: 111 · 2020: 121 · 2019: 86 · 2018: 98 · 2017: 103 · 2016: 131 · 2015: 137 · 2014: 148 · 2013: 153 · 2012: 162
- FWCI
- 46.30
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Licence
- www.springer.com/tdm (tdm)
- Locations
- Nature (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- U.S. Department of Energy
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Molecular Biology › Microbial Metabolic Engineering and Bioproduction
- Physical Sciences › Engineering › Biomedical Engineering › Biofuel production and bioconversion
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Biotechnology › Biochemical and biochemical processes
- Keywords
- isobutanol, n-butanol, 2-phenylethanol, Escherichia coli metabolic engineering, glucose fermentation, biofuels, gasoline substitute, octane number
- MeSH terms
- Butanols, Bioelectric Energy Sources, Escherichia coli, Fermentation, Genetic Engineering, Glucose
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
