GENERATING A SYNTHETIC BIOLOGY TOOLBOX FOR NITROORGANICS

Nitroorganic compounds are widely used as energetic materials in propellants and explosives. They are currently produced through chemical synthesis. The nitroorganic explosives and propellants (energetic compounds) utilized in modern conventional munitions are currently synthesized in chemical processes using largely petroleum derived feedstocks for the carbon skeleton. Biotechnological routes to the energetic compounds and/or their precursors would utilize plant biomass derived sugars and simple nitrogen compounds without the use of strong acids, large amounts of organic solvents, or heavy metal catalysts. In order to decrease environment impact, we proposed the biosynthetic route to synthesize nitroorganics. Biosynthetic routes would potentially have less environmental impact and liberate production of these energetic materials from the need for any foreign-sourced materials or catalysts. To biosynthesize nitroorganics, the genes encoding the enzymes that comprise the pathways to various types of nitroorganic compounds must first be identified and then recombined by synthetic biology techniques to obtain new biosynthetic routes to nitroorganic compounds of interest. Our principal aim in this project is to populate the synthetic biology toolbox with well characterized genes for the biosynthesis of nitroorganic compounds.