Fig. 3: Breakdown of available routes for bioproduction of inventory items from carbon dioxide—either as in situ or recovered resource.
From: Microbial biomanufacturing for space-exploration—what to take and when to make
Connecting lines represent possible paths for carbon-compound conversion of intermediates to products. Usability of different feedstocks is tied to nutritional mode of the microbial host organism (more than one nutritional mode is possible for certain organisms). Classes of products are assigned to respective microbes in respect of their metabolism as well as not represented ‘shadow-characteristics’ of the chassis (e.g., aerobic/anaerobic, prokaryotic/eukaryotic, metabolic rate, robustness, etc.), rather than ability to (naturally) derive the respective compounds. Products may or may not comprise some of the initial feedstocks, hence consecutive runs through this chart to up-cycle carbon are conceivable.
