A synthetic biology platform for sustainable, climate-friendly conversion of CO2 to products using cyanobacteria

Cyanobacteria have great potential as biocatalysts using light to convert CO2 to products of interest, while avoiding competition with the food chain. Cyanobacteria have been genetically modified to synthesise many non-native compounds, from biofuels to high-value products.
CHALLENGE:
Production using cyanobacteria is not yet commercially viable, partly because it is difficult to rationally design DNA encoding a metabolic pathway which performs well. Attempts often give low productivity and/or genetic instability.
SOLUTION:
We recently developed a platform for combinatorial construction and optimisation of metabolic pathway constructs in cyanobacteria. Instead of constructing individual pathway designs, a large 'library' of many variants (typically 1,000,000) is constructed, varying the expression of each enzyme combinatorially. We successfully obtained pathways that were both productive and genetically stable in the standard cyanobacterium Synechocystis.
AIM:
The new combinatorial pathway platform for cyanobacteria will now be applied to generate stable photoautotrophic cell factories efficiently producing non-native products.