The problem
The current state of industrial biotechnology means that the vast majority biorefineries rely on edible substrates such as corn, wheat or sugar canes. This has sparked the food vs. fuel debate, leading to the fundamental question: “Should we use our edible crops to feed the growing human population, or use it to provide sustainable chemicals for the industrialised world?”. A better question might be: “Why are we not doing both?”. The limiting factor of the current processes, is a lack of molecular tools that has limited us to the use of a small number of organisms with narrow substrate ranges. Even though efforts have been made to expand the substrate range of many conventional cell factories, such as Escherichia coli and Saccharomyces cerevisiae, the task has proven difficult and we have yet to see real impact from these efforts.
