BioE Graduate Seminars

Event Introduction

Engineering cyanobacteria for direct solar chemical and fuel production

Abstract

Cyanobacteria can be engineered to produce solar chemicals and solar fuels through indirect processes. I will present our strategies to engineer cyanobacteria to produce alcohols using butanol as an example. Introduction of a single gene encoding KivD resulted in isobutanol producing strains of Synechocystis PCC 6803. Knowledge based modelling of the identified bottleneck KivD resulted in strains with significantly increased isobutanol production. Using our best isobutanol strain in long-term experiments a cumulative titer of 911 mg per L was observed with a maximal rate of 43.6 mg per L and day.

A similar approach to systematically engineer cyanobacteria to produce 1-butanol resulted in cells with a cumulative titer of 4.8 g per L and a maximal rate of 302 mg per L and day. Moreover, cyanobacteria engineered for increased growth/CO2-fixation showed increased product formation exemplified with the alcohol ethanol.

In a recent review we discuss approaches to further increase the production of acetyl-CoA dependent solar chemicals like 1-butanol in photosynthetic microorganisms.

About the speaker

Professor Dr. Peter Lindblad holds a Ph.D. in Physiological Botany (1987). He became an associate professor in physiological botany (1990) and full professor in biology (2000). In 2009 he moved to chemistry and established a new research unit named microbial chemistry.

Research in microbial chemistry is of fundamental science character in the borderland between cell and molecular biology, chemistry and genetics. The vision is to use a combination of advanced synthetic biology and systems biology to develop and analyze photosynthetic microorganisms to be used in future biotechnological applications. At present, the largest research area aims to design, engineer, construct and analyze photosynthetic microbial cell factories (cyanobacteria) for a direct production of solar chemicals and fuels.

Lindblad has more than 200 original scientific publications (h-index: 51), experienced coordinator and partner in European and Nordic collaborative projects. He has several projects in direct collaboration with industrial and other external partners.