Plug'n Play Photosynthesis for Rubisco Independent Fuels

用一种清洁、可再生的燃料来满足世界的能源需求，也许是人类面临的最紧迫的科学和政治挑战。照射到地球表面的太阳能足以满足这些需求。事实上，我们目前的经济是建立在燃烧廉价化石燃料的基础上的，这是古代光合作用的遗迹。不幸的是，我们使用这些燃料的速度远远超过了它们的产量，并且还以潜在的环境可接受的速度产生二氧化碳。因此，开发新的途径直接从太阳能中生产化学燃料，即能量储存分子，变得至关重要。生物系统通过光合作用的发展解决了这个问题。然而，生物进化是为了生物适应性，而不是为了人类的燃料生产。在强光条件下，催化CO2固定速率限制步骤的RuBisCO酶趋于饱和。在这些条件下，卡尔文循环被下调，吸收的大部分光能以热的形式损失掉。需要新的策略来提高利用这种光能来生产燃料。我们解决这个问题的策略是创建一个跨细胞、即插即用的平台，使我们能够将电子从光合作用源细胞转移到沿着纳米线独立设计的燃料生产模块（这些模块可以是微生物的，部分甚至完全合成的）。该项目代表了一种激进的方法，通过电气连接的工程模块化分工来增强和超越自然中观察到的光合作用策略

Supplying the world's energy needs with a clean, renewable fuel is perhaps the most pressing scientific and political challenge facing humanity. The solar energy hitting the earth's surface is more than sufficient to fulfill these needs. In fact, our current economy is predicated on the burning of cheap fossil fuels, relics of ancient photosynthesis. Unfortunately, our rate of use of these fuels far outstrips their production, and is also producing carbon dioxide at potentially environmentally acceptable rates. Thus, it has become essential to develop new routes to directly produce chemical fuels, i.e. energy storage molecules, from solar energy. Biological systems solved this problem through the development of photosynthesis. However, organisms have been evolved for biological fitness, not for human fuel production. Under high light conditions, RuBisCO, the enzyme catalyzing the rate limiting step in CO2 fixation, becomes saturated. Under those conditions, the Calvin Cycle becomes down-regulated and the majority of light energy absorbed is lost as heat. New strategies are needed to improve utilization of this light energy to produce fuels. Our strategy to solve this problem is to create a trans-cellular, plug-and-play platform that allows us to shunt electrons from photosynthetic source cells to independently engineered fuel production modules along nanowires (these could be microbial based, partly or even totally synthetic). The project represents a radical approach to augment and surpass photosynthetic strategies observed in Nature by engineering modular division of labor through electrical connectivity