Applications of Synthetic Biotechnology on Carbon Neutrality Research: A Review on Electrically Driven Microbial and Enzyme Engineering

Abstract

With the advancement of science, technology, and productivity, the rapid development of industrial production, transportation, and the exploitation of fossil fuels has gradually led to the accumulation of greenhouse gases and deterioration of global warming. Carbon neutrality is a balance between absorption and emissions achieved by minimizing carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions from human social productive activity through a series of initiatives, including energy substitution and energy efficiency improvement. Then CO₂ was offset through forest carbon sequestration and captured at last. Therefore, efficiently reducing CO₂ emissions and enhancing CO₂ capture are a matter of great urgency. Because many species have the natural CO₂ capture properties, more and more scientists focus their attention on developing the biological carbon sequestration technique and further combine with synthetic biotechnology and electricity. In this article, the advances of the synthetic biotechnology method for the most promising organisms were reviewed, such as cyanobacteria, Escherichia coli, and yeast, in which the metabolic pathways were reconstructed to enhance the efficiency of CO₂ capture and product synthesis. Furthermore, the electrically driven microbial and enzyme engineering processes are also summarized, in which the critical role and principle of electricity in the process of CO₂ capture are canvassed. This review provides detailed summary and analysis of CO₂ capture through synthetic biotechnology, which also pave the way for implementing electrically driven combined strategies.

Keywords: carbon metabolic pathway; carbon neutrality; electrically driven microbial; enzyme engineering; synthetic biotechnology.