Synthetic approaches to production of rhamnolipid and related glycolipids

Rhamnolipid biosurfactants have tremendous potential across a wide variety of applications, including metals recovery, food additives, enhanced oil recovery, cosmetics and personal care formulations, and antibiofilm applications. Naturally derived rhamnolipids from a variety of biological sources will play an important role in introducing these materials to market applications. However, nature only provides a few rhamnolipid molecular structures in high quantity for use in these applications. This is in stark contrast to synthetic rhamnolipids, which offer a wide variety of structures in high-purity with each structure having its own unique set of physical and chemical properties. Beyond rhamnolipids, synthetic approaches to making these materials can include incorporation of other sugars with the potential to create large libraries of novel glycolipids. This chapter compares the important differences between synthetic and biological rhamnolipids, followed by an overview of the synthesis process, and finally discusses and compares characteristic properties of rhamnolipids as well as other glycolipids.