THYME: Enhanced Ethanol Production in Yeast through Implementation of Unexplored Redox Balancing Pathways

The consumption of fossil fuels and increasing awareness of global warming has led to the search for alternative, sustainable and cleaner burning liquid fuels.
Being a liquid fuel and having similar characteristics to petrol, bioethanol has been considered one of the best alternative fuels. Hence, governments in many countries have implemented policies to encourage the research and development of bioethanol fermentation, thus promoting a three-fold increase in bioethanol production over the past decade. However, to make commercial bioethanol manufacture more competitive with traditional fossil fuels, higher productivity and reduced production costs are essential to achieve.

In this project, we will disrupt the formation of native fermentative by-product(s) that directly consume carbon, otherwise available for ethanol biosynthesis and subsequently introduce a heterologous pathway, which will re-establish cell redox balance as well as diverting additional carbon flux to ethanol, demonstrating a viable, scalable improvement in Saccharomyces cerevisiae ethanol production efficiency.

The project output will provide strategies to improve both the efficiency and yield of ethanol from biomass as well as reducing CO2 emission. Successful project delivery will provide a foundation for the further development of UK bioethanol production, and maintain the competitive global position of UK industrial biotechnology and the bioeconomy.