Synthetic Metabolism for the Third-Generation (3G) Biorefineries

The looming global warming and energy crisis have attracted widespread attention and raised strong concerns about the sustainable development for humanity. Bioconversion of non-edible one-carbon substrates into value-added products appears as an attractive solution to address such concerns. While nature provides multiple pathways, more efficient processes are urgently required to boost the one-carbon bioconversion. Synthetic biology has gained great interest over the past decades due to its believed potential as one of the motors of the forthcoming sustainable bioeconomy. Cell factory and in vitro biosynthesis systems have flourished into the exciting area of synthetic biology for the inexpensive production cost and easy scale-up, and could benefit the one-carbon biotransformation. Unrelenting efforts have been made to improve synthetic biology strategy of Design-Build-Test-Learn (DBTL), which shed lights on the rational or semi-rational construction or modification of metabolism within cells aiming to improve the bioconversion of one-carbon substrates into value-added products including natural products, industrial enzymes and bulk chemicals.

Efficient bioconversion of one-carbon substrates into value-added products still requires a long development process in which both the complete understanding of biosynthetic pathways and underlying regulation mechanism remain to be uncovered. In particular, efficient production of value-added products requires the high adaptability between metabolic pathway and the chassis. People are endeavored to employ artificial design, genetic transformation, multi-omics analysis, metabolic engineering and development in different platforms to address above challenges. This Research Topic aims to cover the recent and novel research trends and approaches for improving bioconversion of one-carbon substrates into value-added products in engineered organisms. We are looking forward to highlighting the basic principles of chassis selection, the potential metabolic modification of chassis, protein engineering and artificial pathway design/implementation/development in advanced platforms to address the challenge of bioconversion of one-carbon substrates efficiently.

The scope of this Research Topic is to highlight Synthetic Biology for improving bioconversion of one-carbon substrates into value-added products. We welcome submissions of Original Research and Review articles in all stages of the DBTL, including but not limited to the following themes:
- Principles of chassis selection for the bioconversion of one-carbon substrates and bioproduction
- Synthetic one-carbon compounds assimilation and artificial metabolism
- Metabolic pathway design, implementation, improvement
- Efficient heterogeneous synthesis of natural products in chassis
- Design of carbon fixation proteins using artificial intelligence
- Efficient fixation of CO2 and capture of the renewable energy for bioproduction
- Design of artificial carbon sequestration cycle pathway