TITLE:
Recent Strategies for the Development of Biosourced-Monomers, Oligomers and Polymers-Based Materials: A Review with an Innovation and a Bigger Data Focus
AUTHORS:
Serge Rebouillat, Fernand Pla
KEYWORDS:
Biomass, Biosourced Monomers, Advanced Biomaterials, Chemical Building Blocks, Design Strategy, Metabolic Engineering, Innovation, Bigger Data
JOURNAL NAME:
Journal of Biomaterials and Nanobiotechnology,
Vol.7 No.4,
October
21,
2016
ABSTRACT: After
setting the ground of the quantum innovation potential of biosourced entities
and outlining the inventive spectrum of adjacent technologies that can derive
from those, the current review highlights, with the support of Bigger Data
approaches, and a fairly large number of articles, more than 250 and 10,000
patents, the following. It covers an overview of biosourced chemicals and
materials, mainly biomonomers, biooligomers and biopolymers; these are produced
today in a way that allows reducing the fossil resources depletion and
dependency, and obtaining environmentally-friendlier goods in a leaner energy
consuming society. A process with a realistic productivity is underlined thanks to the implementation of recent and
specifically effective processes where engineered microorganisms are
capable to convert natural non-fossil goods, at industrial scale, into fuels
and useful high-value chemicals in good yield. Those processes, further
detailed, integrate: metabolic engineering involving 1) system biology, 2) synthetic
biology and 3) evolutionary engineering. They enable acceptable production
yield and productivity, meet the targeted chemical profiles, minimize the
consumption of inputs, reduce the production of by-products and further
diminish the overall operation costs. As generally admitted the properties of
most natural occurring biopolymers (e.g., starch, poly (lactic acid), PHAs.)
are often inferior to those of the polymers derived from petroleum; blends and
composites, exhibiting improved properties, are now successfully produced.
Specific attention is paid to these aspects. Then further evidence is provided
to support the important potential and role of products deriving from the
biomass in general. The need to enter into the era of Bigger Data, to grow and
increase the awareness and multidimensional role and opportunity of biosourcing
serves as a conclusion and future prospects. Although providing a large
reference database, this review is largely initiatory, therefore not mimicking
previous classic reviews but putting them in a multiplying synergistic
prospective.