SBIR Phase I: Engineering novel pigmented cyanobacteria for the use in the ink, printing and colorant industries

这个小企业创新研究（SBIR）第一阶段项目的更广泛的影响/商业潜力是为印刷业开发和生产一种可持续的油墨。油墨通常用于各种应用，每年生产数十亿磅的油墨。油墨中的大部分化学物质是石油基的，是从地球上开采出来的。这些化学物质对人类和环境也是有毒的。大自然已经产生了大量的分子，能够取代目前在墨水中使用的成分。虽然许多产生这些替代分子的生物生长缓慢，需要像糖这样的能量来源，但光合微生物，特别是蓝藻，能够被改造成以有效的方式产生一些替代分子，以生产安全、可再生和100%可生物降解的油墨配方中的颜料。这种油墨将被企业用于印刷包装、营销材料和其他印刷品。开发和整合这些油墨产品将减少传统油墨对环境和人类健康的总体有害影响。这个SBIR一期项目建议开发可持续的墨水配方，使用工程蓝藻细胞能够产生细胞色素，使培养物在外观上呈光学黑色。这些光学黑色细胞将作为颜料，取代传统油墨配方中开采的颜料。该项目在油墨配方中使用整个蓝藻细胞，因此不需要提取颜料/染料，从而节省能源和降低成本。虽然目前用于墨水的颜料是从地下开采的矿物质，如炭黑，这是一种有限的材料，但蓝藻是生物产品的可再生生物质来源，因为这些生物利用阳光、二氧化碳、废水和不适合传统农业的土地来快速产生生物质。除了开发被认为是光学黑色的可再生蓝藻菌株外，该项目还将开发最佳生长条件以及在油墨行业的几个子集中利用这些菌株的技术经济模型。利用蓝藻生产油墨产品是一种新颖的应用，将是藻类生物制品行业的重大突破。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project is developing and producing a sustainable ink for the printing industry. Ink is commonly used in a variety of applications, and billions of pounds of ink are produced annually. The majority of chemicals within ink are petroleum based and are mined from the earth. These chemicals also are toxic to humans and the environment. Nature has produced a multitude of molecules capable of replacing components currently utilized in ink. While many organisms that produce these replacement molecules are slow growing and require energy sources like sugar, photosynthetic microbes, specifically cyanobacteria, are capable of being engineered to generate some of these replacement molecules in an efficient manner to produce pigments in ink formulations that are safe, renewable and 100% biodegradable. This ink will be used by businesses for printing packaging, marketing material, and other printed products. Developing and integrating these ink products will decrease the overall detrimental impact of traditional inks on the environment and human health. This SBIR Phase I project proposes to develop sustainable ink formulations using engineered cyanobacteria cells capable of generating cellular pigments that will make the cultures optically black in appearance. These optically black cells will act as pigments that replace mined pigments found in traditional ink formulations. This project uses entire cyanobacteria cells in ink formulations so that extraction of pigments/dyes is not necessary, thus saving energy and reducing cost. While currently utilized pigments used for ink are minerals mined from the ground such as carbon black, which is a finite material, cyanobacteria are a renewable source of biomass for bio-products, as these organisms leverage sunlight, carbon dioxide, wastewater and land otherwise unsuitable for conventional agriculture to rapidly generate biomass. In addition to the development of renewable cyanobacteria strains considered to be optically black, this project will develop optimal growth conditions as well as techno-economic models leveraging these strains within several subsets of the ink industry. Using cyanobacteria to produce ink products is a novel application, which will be a major breakthrough for the algal bio-products industry.