Combining Metabolic Engineering and Electrocatalysis: Application to the Production of Polyamides from Sugar

Biorefineries aim to convert biomass into a spectrum of products ranging from biofuels to specialty chemicals. To achieve economically sustainable conversion, it is crucial to streamline the catalytic and downstream processing steps. In this work, a route that combines bio-and electrocatalysis to convert glucose into bio-based unsaturated nylon-6,6 is reported. An engineered strain of Saccharomyces cerevisiae was used as the initial biocatalyst for the conversion of glucose into muconic acid, with the highest reported muconic acid titer of 559.5 mgL > 1 in yeast. Without any separation, muconic acid was further electrocatalytically hydrogenated to 3-hexenedioic acid in 94% yield despite the presence of biogenic impurities. Bio-based unsaturated nylon-6,6 (unsaturated polyamide-6,6) was finally obtained by polymerization of 3-hexenedioic acid with hexamethylenediamine.