Abstract
Research toward renewable and sustainable energy has identified candidate terpenes capable of blending/replacing petroleum-derived jet, diesel and tactical fuels. Despite being naturally produced and stored by many plants, there are few examples of commercial recovery of terpenes from plants due to low yields. Plant terpene biosynthesis is regulated at multiple levels leading to wide variability in terpene content and chemistry. Advances in the plant molecular toolkit including annotated genomes, high-throughput omics profiling and genome-editing provides an ideal platform for high-resolution analysis and in-depth understanding of plant terpene metabolism. Concomitantly, such information is useful for bioengineering strategies of metabolic pathways for candidate terpenes. Here, we review the status of terpenes as an advanced biofuel and discuss the potential of plants as a viable agronomic solution for future advanced terpene-derived biofuels.
