In November, Fong Fu Hsu, PhD and collaborators had their research titled “Engineering diverse fatty acid compositions of phospholipids in Escherichia coli,” published in “Metabolic Engineering.”
“Bacterial fatty acids (FAs) are an essential component of the cellular membrane and are an important source of renewable chemicals as they can be converted to fatty alcohols, esters, ketones, and alkanes, and used as biofuels, detergents, lubricants, and commodity chemicals.”
Hsu and colleagues conducted the study by engineering novel Escherichia coli phospholipid biosynthetic pathways and creating strands with distinct FA profiles. This provided great insight and further understanding to the effects of FA structure diversity on the transcriptome, growth and ability to react to stress.
Engineering diverse fatty acid compositions of phospholipids in Escherichia coli