Sustainable Biological Production of Energetic Materials
Abstract
The goal of this research is develop dynamic metabolic control using syntheticmetabolic valves in parallel with standard bioprocess conditions to standardize the screeningand scale up of a variety of products of different oxidation states, and made with differingmetabolic precursors and cofactors. The generation of more stable, low cost and domestically sourced energetic materials is a growing need. Technologies offering domestic and secure production of advanced energetic materials as replacements or alternatives for TNT, trinitroglycerine and RDX may be even critical in military including naval operations. Fortunately, several advances in technology have laid the groundwork for numerous routes to the biological production of precursors to energetic materials including phloroglucinol and 1,2,4-butanetriol. To date, the production of these molecules using engineered microbial cells has been demonstrated, but results are truly in the proof of concept stage. We propose the application of an innovative strain-engineering platform utilizing dynamic metabolic control that has been recently developed. This technological approach decouples microbial growth from production, enabling for the very rapid development and improvement of strains for the production of numerous molecules in standardized two-stage fermentation process. Armed with this development platform we aim to optimize the production of these interesting energetic material precursors to commercially relevant rates, titers and yields producing enough material to enable further downstream chemistry and molecule evalution.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Nov 23, 2016
- Source ID
- N000141612558
Entities
People
- Michael D Lynch
Organizations
- Duke University
- Office of Naval Research
- United States Navy