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

由于能源、环境和经济方面的考虑，有价值化学品的生物合成越来越受到关注。全球能源和环境问题促使人们加大努力，减少二氧化碳排放，利用可再生资源合成生物燃料和散装化学品。将二氧化碳直接转化为化学品的途径在概念上是可取的，并且已经报道了许多方法。然而，迄今为止，这些报道的方法的生产率低，使它们不经济。提出的研究代表了一种新的策略，以建立和提高生产有价值的化学品从二氧化碳使用蓝藻作为生物催化剂。拟议的方法将有助于确保国家的能源独立和经济增长。随着对可再生和可持续化学生产的兴趣激增，拟议的研究项目在合成生物学和代谢工程中具有许多关键和变革性的意义。PI将培养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。拟议中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。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，但它们不能自然地将二氧化碳转化为化合物，如先进的生物燃料。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。蓝藻已经被改造成可以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。开发一个通用平台是至关重要的，以便有效地设计蓝藻物种的生化生产，并预测相关的变化，细胞动力学和性状后的目标工程。提出的研究具有三个技术影响：(1)阐明蓝藻的紧密抑制机制；(2)制定策略，确定化工生产的有利性质；(3)发展全细胞重塑以扩大二氧化碳化学生产的代谢。由于该项目的跨学科性质，由CBET部门的生物技术、生化和生物质工程项目颁发的CAREER奖由分子和细胞生物学部门的系统和合成生物学项目以及数学科学部的数学生物学项目共同资助。

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.