Metabolic Engineering of Carbon Fixation and Utilization for Biopolymer Production by Cyanobacteria (TSE99-B)

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Cyanobacter have evolved efficient metabolic pathways for the fixation of carbon dioxide (CO2) and its conversion to various metabolic products. This capability can be exploited in the development of processes for biological CO2 sequestration in combination with the production of useful products. Polyhydroxyalkonates (PHA) represent such a group of product compounds whose biosynthesis, in the case of photoautotrophic organisms, derives from the CO2 incorporated into the cells through photosynthesis. The goals of this project are to: (1) establish transformed strains of cyanobacteria with increased PHA production levels as well as improved PHA compositions; and (2) carry out basic kinetic studies of CO2 fixation and PHA formation in batch as well as continuous culture systems for wild type and transformed cyanobacter strains.