Feasibilities of consolidated bioprocessing microbes: from pretreatment to biofuel production

Abstract

Lignocelluloses are rich sugar treasures, which can be converted to useful commodities such as biofuel with the help of efficient combination of enzymes and microbes. Although several bioprocessing approaches have been proposed, biofuel production from lignocelluloses is limited because of economically infeasible technologies for pretreatment, saccharification and fermentation. Use of consolidated bioprocessing (CBP) microbes is the most promising method for the cost-effective production of biofuels. However, lignocelluloses are obtained from highly diverse environment and hence are heterogeneous in nature. Therefore, it is necessary to develop and integrate tailor-designed pretreatment processes and efficient microbes that can thrive on many different kinds of biomass. In this review, the progress towards the construction of consolidated bioprocessing microbes, which can efficiently convert heterogeneous lignocellulosic biomass to bioenergy, has been discussed; in addition, the potential and constraints of current bioprocessing technologies for cellulosic biofuel production have been discussed.

Keywords: Biofuels; Consolidated bioprocessing; Heterogeneous lignocellulosic biomass; Pretreatment; Synthetic biology.