CAREER: Development of a platform for cyanobacterial chemical production from CO2

1349663由于能源、环境和经济方面的担忧，Shota生物合成有价值的化学品得到了越来越多的关注。全球能源和环境问题促进了减少二氧化碳排放和利用可再生资源合成生物燃料和大宗化学品的努力。从概念上讲，将二氧化碳转化为化学品的直接途径是可取的，已有许多方法被报道。然而，这些报道的方法生产率低，到目前为止并不经济。这项拟议的研究代表了一种新的战略，可以利用蓝藻作为生物催化剂来建立和改进从二氧化碳中生产有价值的化学品。拟议中的方法将有助于确保国家的能源独立和经济增长。随着人们对可再生和可持续化学品生产的兴趣与日俱增，该研究项目在合成生物学和代谢工程领域具有许多关键和变革性的影响。国际和平研究所将培养一批能够在基础科学和工程之间架起桥梁的新型跨学科研究人员。这项拟议的研究将把二氧化碳排放、气候变化和能源生产等当代问题与教育结合起来。这项拟议的研究对社会的好处是广泛的，因为由此产生的技术将显著影响解决人类一些最紧迫问题的能力。虽然蓝藻自然能够利用二氧化碳，但它们并不能自然地将二氧化碳转化为先进的生物燃料等化合物。出于这个原因，合成生物学被应用于操纵蓝藻基因组，以允许产生特定的、有价值的化合物。蓝藻已经被改造成产生许多不同的化合物。然而，蓝藻的生化生产效率仍然很低。为了有效地设计用于生化生产的蓝藻物种，并预测定向工程后相关的细胞动力学和特征的变化，开发通用平台是至关重要的。这项拟议的研究具有三个技术影响：(1)阐明蓝藻的紧密抑制机制；(2)确定有利于化学生产的特性的策略；(3)发展整个细胞重塑，以扩大二氧化碳化学生产的新陈代谢。由于该项目的跨学科性质，这项由CBET分部生物技术、生化和生物质工程计划颁发的职业奖项由分子和细胞生物学分部的系统和合成生物学计划以及数学科学部的数学生物学计划共同资助。

1349663 Atsumi, Shota Biosynthesis of valuable chemicals has gained increased attention because of energy, environmental, and economic concerns. Global energy and environmental problems have stimulated increased efforts towards reducing CO2 emissions and synthesizing biofuels and bulk chemicals from renewable resources. Direct routes for conversion of CO2 to chemicals are conceptually preferable and many methods have been reported. However, these reported methods suffer from low productivity rendering them uneconomical thus far. The proposed research represents a novel strategy to establish and improve the production of valuable chemicals from CO2 using cyanobacteria as biocatalysts. The proposed method will aid in securing both the nation's energy independence and economic growth. With the exploding interests in renewable and sustainable chemical production, the proposed research project has many critical and transformative implications in synthetic biology and metabolic engineering. The PI will train a new breed of interdisciplinary researchers who can build bridges between basic science and engineering. The proposed research will integrate contemporary issues such as CO2 emissions, climate change, and energy production with education. The benefits of the proposed research to society are widespread, as the resulting technologies will significantly impact the ability to resolve some of humanity's most pressing problems.While cyanobacteria are naturally able to utilize CO2, they are not naturally able to transform CO2 into compounds such as advanced biofuels. For this reason, synthetic biology is applied to manipulate the cyanobacterial genome to allow generation of specific, valuable compounds. Cyanobacteria have already been engineered to produce a number of different compounds. However, the efficiency of biochemical production by cyanobacteria remains low. Development of a general platform is critical in order to efficiently engineer cyanobacterial species for biochemical production and to predict changes in both relevant, cellular dynamics and traits after targeted engineering. The proposed research possesses three technological impacts: (1) elucidation of tight repression mechanisms in cyanobacteria; (2) establishment of strategies to determine favorable properties for chemical production; and (3) development of whole cellular remodeling to expand the metabolism for chemical production from CO2. Due to the interdisciplinary nature of the project, this CAREER award by the Biotechnology, Biochemical, and Biomass Engineering Program of the CBET Division is co-funded by the Systems and Synthetic Biology Program of the Division of Molecular and Cellular Biology and by the Mathematical Biology Program of the Division of Mathematical Sciences.