Increasing the metabolic capacity of Escherichia coli for hydrogen production through heterologous expression of the Ralstonia eutropha SH operon

摘要

BackgroundFermentative hydrogen production is an attractive means for the sustainable production of this future energy carrier but is hampered by low yields. One possible solution is to create, using metabolic engineering, strains which can bypass the normal metabolic limits to substrate conversion to hydrogen. Escherichia coli can degrade a variety of sugars to hydrogen but can only convert electrons available at the pyruvate node to hydrogen, and is unable to use the electrons available in NADH generated during glycolysis.