Microbial Engineering in Biofuel Production—A Global Outlook, Advances, and Roadmap

Abstract

The dwindling supply of fossil fuels and environmental issues have raised awareness of alternative energy sources like biofuels. Microbial engineering, on the contrary, presents a viable approach for sustainable biofuel production considering the rising demand for renewable energy sources and the pressing need to mitigate climate change. This technique involves the strategic manipulation of microbes to maximize the production of biofuels, a renewable and sustainable substitute for fossil fuels. However, stepping up biofuel production poses numerous challenges, such as cost-effectiveness, sustainability, and regulatory concerns. Therefore, overcoming challenges of scaling up microbial biofuel production and creating cost-effective downstream processing are need of the hour. Through the exploration of concepts such as techno-feasibility, resource sustainability, resilience, and techno-economic analysis, it is conceivable that the development of technologies aligned with the principles of the circular economy can be achieved. In the present chapter the importance of metabolic engineering, synthetic biology, systems biology, and multi-omics for the design and optimization of microbial strains for biofuel production is reviewed and discussed. Also, a brief overview of the current state of microbial engineering for biofuel production globally is presented. The development of more effective and resistant microbial strains with the integration of an omics knowledge base for comprehension of systems-level knowledge of metabolic networks along with the use of novel bioprocessing methods for large-scale production have also been emphasised in this chapter. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024.