SBIR Phase I: Novel microalgae for high yield hydrogen production

这个小型企业创新研究(SBIR)项目的更广泛影响/商业潜力是开发一种基于微藻的商业制氢工艺，该工艺将超过现有或正在开发的技术。到2022年，按价值计算的全球氢能发电市场预计将达到1547亿美元。低成本、高纯度、可再生、可扩展的制氢技术将加速向氢经济过渡，从而促进国内能源独立并创造新的经济机会。许多行业，如石油化工、化工和电子行业，将受益于低成本的工业氢气。运输和发电行业也将受益于燃料效率的提高。环境效益包括化石燃料的替代，将氢气生产从天然气转向阳光和水，以及大幅减少有害排放。该项目的目标是将专有的代谢工程光合藻与生物处理和硬件工程的最新进展相结合，以生产清洁、可再生的氢气。这个小型企业创新研究第一阶段项目建议使用一种新的代谢工程策略来开发产生高氢气产量的微藻菌株。为了实施这一策略，必须开发一种合适的亲本菌株，将完整的产氢基因与改进的导入基因(转基因)的稳定性结合起来。尽管有遗传转化方法可用，但野生型菌株的转基因稳定性仍然很差。这严重限制了商业菌株的发展。有两种藻类紫外线突变体可用，它们的转基因稳定性大大提高，但都损害了产氢基因。拟议的调查将评估创造合适的亲本菌株的可行性。目的是：1)确定最好的野生型产氢菌株与UV突变体之间的基因差异；2)将候选基因引入UV突变体以恢复产氢代谢；3)敲除与野生型菌株中转基因失活有关的候选基因；4)测试工程菌产生氢气和保留转基因的能力。该项目将生产所需的亲本菌株，并能够实施创新战略，以开发在目标商业过程中大幅提高氢气率的生产菌株。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) project is the development of a microalgae-based commercial hydrogen production process that will surpass current or developing technologies. By 2022, the global hydrogen generation market by value is projected to reach $154.7 billion. A technology for low-cost, high purity, renewable, scalable hydrogen production will accelerate transition to a hydrogen economy, thus facilitating domestic energy independence and creating new economic opportunities. Many industries, such as the petro-chemical, chemical, and electronics industries, would benefit from low cost industrial hydrogen. Transportation and electric power generation industries also would benefit from increased fuel efficiency. Environmental benefits include replacement of fossil fuels, switching hydrogen production from natural gas to sunlight and water, and substantial reduction of harmful emissions. The goal of this project is to incorporate proprietary, metabolically engineered, photosynthetic algae in combination with recent advances in bioprocessing and hardware engineering to manufacture clean, renewable hydrogen. This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project proposes to develop microalgae strains that generate high hydrogen yields using a novel metabolic engineering strategy. To pursue this strategy, a suitable parental strain must be developed, combining intact hydrogen production genes with improved stability of introduced genes (transgenes). Despite the availability of genetic transformation methods, transgene stability in wild type strains remains poor. This seriously limits development of commercial strains. Two algal UV mutants with greatly improved transgene stability are available, but both have impaired hydrogen production genes. The proposed investigation will assess the feasibility of creating a suitable parental strain. The objectives are: 1) determine differences between genes of the best wild type hydrogen producing strain and the UV mutants; 2) introduce candidate genes into the UV mutants to restore hydrogen production metabolism; 3) knock out candidate genes involved in transgene inactivation in the wild type strain; and 4) test the ability of the engineered strains to generate hydrogen and retain transgenes. This project will produce the desired parental strain and enable implementation of the innovative strategy for developing production strains with greatly increased hydrogen rates in the target commercial process.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.