eCO₂DIS – Simulation-guided development of an electricity or H₂-driven in-vitro acetyl-CoA production module as platform chemical from CO₂ for diversity oriented synthesis

In eCO₂DIS, synthetic biology, bioelectrocatalysis and polymer chemistry will converge to a powerful technology for diversity oriented synthesis of value added target compounds directly from CO₂. The synthetic diversification of acetyl-CoA will be demonstrated for 3 different product types: aliphatic alcohols, aromatics, and structurally complex natural products.

Challenges

CO₂ and renewable energy are key resources to defossilize chemical industry synthesis processes and thus make them sustainable, but are currently only used to a limited extent due to a lack of technologies for sustainable chemistry.

Project plan

eCO₂DIS consists of two modules: 1) the acetyl-CoA module: Here, CO₂ fixation is carried out using green electricity and/or green H₂ via a synthetic acetyl-CoA (SACA) reaction pathway to yield acetyl-CoA, one of the key intermediates in nature's chemistry set. 2) Within a diversification module, various industrially relevant target products will be synthesized from acetyl-CoA via short enzyme cascades. Through rational design, we will kinetically balance the enzyme cascade reactions and cofactor supply to achieve high atomic economy. The enzymes will be immobilized in electron-conducting and protein-stabilizing redox-active hydrogels to create direct electron pathways from H₂/electricity to the final product through an uninterrupted enzyme cascade.

We would like to thank the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and the project sponsor Jülich (PTJ) for funding the project “eCO₂DIS”, promotional reference 031B1405A, within the program “CO₂BioTech”