Issue 12, 2018

Engineering photoautotrophic carbon fixation for enhanced growth and productivity

Abstract

Oxygenic photosynthesis is the origin of most organic carbon compounds on Earth and an essential part of the natural carbon cycle. Cyanobacteria, the only oxygenic photoautotrophic prokaryotes, are important in several natural processes: as primary sustainable producers, in providing oxygen to the atmosphere, and in nitrogen fixation. From a biotechnological perspective, cyanobacteria are ideal cell factories since (i) the required energy and carbon source, sunlight and CO2, are abundant and freely available, (ii) cyanobacteria are capable of producing a variety of natural products, which can be used as fuels, medicines, cosmetics etc., and (iii) metabolic engineering and synthetic biology tools of cyanobacteria are being developed rapidly, making them feasible as host organisms for heterologous production of interesting compounds. However, compared to commercially employed heterotrophic microorganisms, the growth and productivity of cyanobacteria are currently not competitive. Therefore, improving cyanobacterial growth and productivity is an important task to enable commercialization of cyanobacterial bioproducts. Such studies also offer important clues for increasing the photosynthesis and yield of crop plants, which is important in view of providing food for a rapidly increasing world population. There are many strategies targeting this task, such as optimizing cultivation conditions, engineering native pathways, and introducing synthetic pathways based on an understanding of overall metabolic networks. One major limitation of cyanobacterial productivity, however, is the low efficiency of carbon fixation through the Calvin–Benson–Bassham (CBB) cycle. In this review, we introduce and discuss the possibilities to enhance growth and productivity by engineering the CBB cycle. We also give a brief discussion of options to further extend the capabilities of cells to fix inorganic carbon by the introduction of other native and artificial carbon fixation cycles.

Graphical abstract: Engineering photoautotrophic carbon fixation for enhanced growth and productivity

Article information

Article type
Review Article
Submitted
15 Jūn. 2018
Accepted
15 Okt. 2018
First published
16 Okt. 2018
This article is Open Access
Creative Commons BY-NC license

Sustainable Energy Fuels, 2018,2, 2583-2600

Engineering photoautotrophic carbon fixation for enhanced growth and productivity

F. Liang, P. Lindberg and P. Lindblad, Sustainable Energy Fuels, 2018, 2, 2583 DOI: 10.1039/C8SE00281A

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported Licence. You can use material from this article in other publications, without requesting further permission from the RSC, provided that the correct acknowledgement is given and it is not used for commercial purposes.

To request permission to reproduce material from this article in a commercial publication, please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

If you are an author contributing to an RSC publication, you do not need to request permission provided correct acknowledgement is given.

If you are the author of this article, you do not need to request permission to reproduce figures and diagrams provided correct acknowledgement is given. If you want to reproduce the whole article in a third-party commercial publication (excluding your thesis/dissertation for which permission is not required) please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

Read more about how to correctly acknowledge RSC content.

Social activity

Spotlight

Advertisements