Engineered Cyanobacterium Grows Without Light

Scientists at the University of California, Davis used the principle of synthetic biology to engineer a strain of photosynthetic cyanobacterium so that it could grow even without light.

In a report presented at the 113th General Meeting of the American Society for Microbiology, the UC Davis researchers described how they rewired the metabolism of the cynobacterium Synechococcus elongatus strain PCC 7942, a model organism that relies on carbon dioxide and light energy for growth. This cyanobacterium was previously engineered to recycle carbon dioxide into a variety of biofuels and valuable chemicals in the presence of light, which is a limiting factor in biofuel conversion. To overcome this constraint, foreign genes were inserted into the cyanobacterium to enable it to grow and generate biofuels in diurnal (light or dark) conditions.

The scientists said that advances in this kind of research is desirable for more efficient, economical and controllable bioproduction systems.