1. Fermentation route to hydroxystyrene (HSM)
yeast
bacterium
Bacterium
yeast
bacterium
pal
pdc
The first part of this talk focuses on the production of aromatic molecules, 4-vinylphenol– or as we commonly named--hydroxystyrene. Hydroxystyrene is a precursor to acetoxystyrene– used in one of our electronic businesses to prepare polymers for applications such as photolithography. We envisioned and demonstrated– the production of hydroxystyrene by taking an organism optimized for tyrosine production and inserting genes from two sources–One a yeast that encodes a deamination enzyme phenylalanine ammonia lyase or pal and genes from a bacterium, to encode a decarboxylation enzyme phca decarboxylase. These in turn convert the tyrosine intermediate in turn to para-hydroxycinnamic acid and then to p-hydroxystyrene.
-NH3
-CO2