Pilot-scale production of leucine from CO₂.

Authors

Christian Fink, Franziska Steger, Sebastian Schmidt, Elisa Hilts, François Unger, Aquilla Ruddyard, Maximilian Klein, Bart-Jan Akerboom, Thomas Stehrer-Polašek, Stefan Drießler, Shubham Gurav, Ross T Fennessy, Justin Smith, Günther Bochmann, Simon K-M R Rittmann

Published in

Trends in biotechnology. Aug 13, 2026. Epub Aug 13, 2026.

Abstract

Beyond their nutritional value, amino acids are of relevance in medicine and, due to their chemical properties, they are indispensable for applications in many different realms, such as pharmaceutics, cosmetics, animal feed, food, and the beverage industry. In this research article, we report an archaeal cell factory for leucine production from CO₂ that has been generated by rational design, random mutagenesis, and pathway engineering. The cell factory has been bioprocess-technologically examined and successfully scaled up with regard to productivity, product quality, and operational stability. In a 2-day fed-batch campaign, we produced 181 g of leucine from CO₂ at the 150-L pilot-plant scale with a mean volumetric leucine productivity of 65 mg L^-1 h^-1. A thorough techno-economic analysis indicates that the rollout of leucine production from CO₂ is nearly economically feasible on a global scale.

PMID:
42595686
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 14 Aug 2026.

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