Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
Autotrophic microorganisms have the ability to convert light into chemical energy and to use this energy to bind carbon dioxide. This adds to the mass balance of the re¬sources available for our society. With the depletion of fossil resources, and limited increase of the agricultural production, autotrophy has the potential to provide an ever-growing human population with chemical products. From a synthetic viewpoint, autotrophy is a very promising approach for the supply of chemical energy for synthetic reactions. Yet, on the way to a wide industrial application, several technical challenges must be overcome. The book outlines the most important autotrophic microorganisms and strategies for their biotechnological utilization. It gives an overview on enabling technologies such as engineering of metabolic enzymes, molecular biology tools for autotrophic microorganisms and new bioreactors to are expected to accelerate the progress in this field.
Synopsis
The depletion of fossil resources and an ever-growing human population create an increasing demand for the development of sustainable processes for the utilization of renewable resources. As autotrophic microorganisms offer numerous metabolic pathways for the fixation of carbon dioxide and the metabolic utilization of light, electricity and inorganic energy donors, they are expected to play a pivotal role in an emerging carbon neutral society.
This text-book presents the metabolic principles of autotrophy and current efforts for their utilization in biotechnology, including photoautotrophic, chemolithoautotrophic and electroautotrophic organisms. It outlines how modern molecular biology and process engineering create technologies that allow to use industrial off-gases and inorganic energy for the synthesis of bio-based plastics, materials and other chemical products.
The text-book is ideally suited for students in advanced graduate and master courses and offers a reference for PhD students, engineers, chemists, biologists and all with an interests in biotechnology and renewable resources.