Abstract
The simple brewer’s yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae is one of the most well-characterized microorganisms on the planet. It is used to ferment alcohol, as well as synthesize drugs and feedstock chemicals. Now, researchers have created yeast that can perform another trick: harnessing sunlight. Neel Joshi’s group at Harvard University added semiconductor nanoparticles to the surface of genetically engineered yeast to generate an inorganic, biological, hybrid organism. The yeast grabs electrons, which are produced when light shines on the particles, to drive production of shikimic acid—used to make oseltamivir, sold under the brand name Tamiflu. Joshi tells C&EN that the project was conceived of by two postdocs, Junling Guo and Miguel Suástegui, who have backgrounds in materials science and metabolic engineering, respectively. “They came up with this idea,” Joshi explains, “which initially I didn’t think was going to work.” But he was proved wrong. “It worked beautifully.” The researchers fixed indium phosphide
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