Abstract
Photosynthetic microbes are of emerging interest as production organisms in biotechnology because they can grow autotrophically using sunlight, an abundant energy source, and CO2, a greenhouse gas. Important traits for such microbes are fast growth and amenability to genetic manipulation. Here we describe Synechococcus elongatus UTEX 2973, a unicellular cyanobacterium capable of rapid autotrophic growth, comparable to heterotrophic industrial hosts such as yeast. Synechococcus UTEX 2973 can be readily transformed for facile generation of desired knockout and knock-in mutations. Genome sequencing coupled with global proteomics studies revealed that Synechococcus UTEX 2973 is a close relative of the widely studied cyanobacterium Synechococcus elongatus PCC 7942, an organism that grows more than two times slower. A small number of nucleotide changes are the only significant differences between the genomes of these two cyanobacterial strains. Thus, our study has unraveled genetic determinants necessary for rapid growth of cyanobacterial strains of significant industrial potential.
Highlights
Photosynthetic microbes are of emerging interest as production organisms in biotechnology because they can grow autotrophically using sunlight, an abundant energy source, and CO2, a greenhouse gas
Efforts focusing on understanding cyanobacterial systems are underway; one drawback compared to E. coli or yeast is that the growth rates of commonly used cyanobacterial model strains are significantly slower, requiring extended timeframes to accomplish synthetic biology experiments that can be performed in E. coli or yeast in days
A rapidly growing cyanobacterial strain that can be genetically manipulated would serve as an ideal candidate for broad research purposes, including studies that focus on understanding cyanobacterial systems and those that utilize cyanobacteria to produce valuable products
Summary
Photosynthetic microbes are of emerging interest as production organisms in biotechnology because they can grow autotrophically using sunlight, an abundant energy source, and CO2, a greenhouse gas. Cyanobacteria offer attractive systems for biotechnological applications due to their increased growth rate compared to plants and their relative ease of genetic manipulation compared to eukaryotic algae[1,2,3] Unlike heterotrophic microbes such as the bacterium Escherichia coli and the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae that are of common industrial use, cyanobacteria can grow photoautotrophically by harvesting light energy. PCC 7002, have been used in synthetic biology studies for biosynthesis of multiple products including free fatty acids[8], isoprene9, 2,3-butanediol10, 1-butanol[11], squalene[12], n-alkanes[13] and hydrogen[14] Despite these advantages of using cyanobacteria in biotechnological settings, some limitations have kept these organisms from becoming the preferred microbial platforms in such applications. Eliminating a gene from all copies of the chromosome may take several rounds of segregation
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