Characterisation and enhancement of cyanobacterial extracellular electron transfer using CRISPR tools and photoelectrochemical analysis

蓝细菌将电子传输到其细胞外环境的能力（称为外生电活性）已被利用来构建能够进行太阳能发电的生物光伏器件。然而，有限的了解，这种活动的生物过程，防止基因工程的高度exoelectrogenic菌株的蓝藻，这将提高这些设备产生的功率密度。该项目旨在鉴定其产物增强或抑制外生电活性的基因，并利用这些信息来设计高度外生电的蓝藻菌株。SgRNA文库将用于使用CRISPRi产生突变蓝藻的单基因敲低文库。将使用定制电极微阵列筛选文库成员的外生电活性。在此之后，将开发通用CRISPR-Cas9载体以促进蓝藻的基因组编辑，从而产生高度产电的菌株。

The ability of cyanobacteria to transport electrons to their extracellular environment (termed exoelectrogenic activity) has been exploited to construct biophotovoltaic devices capable Of solar power generation. However, a limited understanding of the biological processes underlying this activity prevent genetic engineering of highly exoelectrogenic strains of cyanobacteria which would boost the power densities produced by these devices. This project aims to identify genes whose products enhance or inhibit exoelectrogenic activity and use this information to engineer a highly exoelectrogenic cyanobacterial strain. sgRNA libraries will be used to generate single-gene knockdown libraries of mutant cyanobacteria using CRISPRi. The exoelectrogenic activity of library members will be screened using a custom electrode microarray. Following this, a general-purpose CRISPR-Cas9 vector will be developed to facilitate genome editing of cyanobacteria to produce a highly exoelectrogenic strain.