Phosphatase engineering for microbial production of a high-value organic acid

Lygos is developing novel bio-manufacturing processes to valuable chemicals. Our targeted chemicals have existing, large markets of >$250MM per year. Current petroleum-based production of these chemicals has a number of pitfalls. Current chemical manufacturing requires petroleum feedstocks, utilize environmentally damaging processes, achieve low-yields, and have high production costs. In contrast, Lygos' process converts domestic, renewable, agricultural sugars, including corn, corn-stover, woody-biomass, and other energy crops into chemicals using fermentation; our process is high-yielding, is performed at ambient temperatures, and could decrease production costs by >50%.Lygos technology and business directly supports government wide and USDA SBIR program priorities and societal challenge areas. Benefits established from Lygos processes for production of renewable chemicals include increasing product diversification from US agricultural feedstocks, increasing energy efficiency of manufacturing processes, decreasing carbon dioxide emissions, and increasing US energy independence. This small business innovation research phase I project will support Lygos development of a biocatalyst for conversion of sugar feedstocks into fine and commodity chemicals to expand their existing markets. With regard to societal impact, Lygos microbial processes are based on renewable feedstocks and eliminate use of environmentally hazardous materials.