ST3-06: Metabolic engineering of cyanobacteria: application of transformational technologies to algae biofuel production

The development and application of omics approaches to the study of complex biological systems is being utilized by biotechnology companies to transform numerous industries of commercial import. Targeted Growth Inc. (TGI) is a crop biotechnology company focused on developing products for both the agricultural and energy industries. TGI is pursuing an algae biofuel strategy centered on metabolic engineering of genetically pliable species of cyanobacteria. TGI’s metabolic engineering goal is to redesign cyanobacterial biosynthetic pathways to enable regulated production of large quantities of lipids and to transition this technology to a commercially viable, scalable growth platform. TGI is employing targeted gene disruption and expanding methods for the inducible expression of endogenous and exogenous genes in order to design synthetic regulons enabling the insertion of new and/or redesigned metabolic pathways. TGI is leveraging the power of omics approaches, genome scale phenotypic screens, transcriptomics and metabolomics, to expedite the evolution of new or enhanced traits to drive the development of a robust, controllable lipid production platform in cyanobacteria. A description of how TGI is applying these methods to engineer enhanced lipid production in cyanobacteria will be presented.