Synthetic biology strategies to address waste CO₂ loss during biofuel production

Owing to differing degrees of reduction between substrates and products, biofuel production from carbohydrates inevitably releases a significant amount of CO₂, reducing both overall carbon utilization efficiency and the sustainability of biofuel production processes. To address this fundamental and persistent challenge, recent studies have explored diverse metabolic engineering and synthetic biology approaches to either i) limit CO₂ evolution by decreasing its generation or ii) recycle it through various biochemical mechanisms. Through these strategies, carbon that would have been wasted as CO₂ is reduced, allowing carbon conversion efficiency to be significantly enhanced and greenhouse gas emission effectively mitigated, thus potentially leading to a more sustainable microbial process for biofuel production.