Monday, April 29, 2013
Exhibit Hall
Conversion of lignocellulosic biomass into fuels and chemicals is an attractive, sustainable alternative to traditional fossil fuels. Biomass pretreatment yields a mixture of sugars, particularly rich in glucose and xylose. Developing microbes that can efficiently utilize both sugars, especially xylose, for fuel and chemical production is a key to success. Photoautotrophic microorganisms (cyanobacteria and algae) offer high promise as biocatalysts powered by sunlight for the conversion of CO2 into organic compounds. Some strains of cyanobacteria can also use glucose, but not xylose, as carbon and energy source. We seek to introduce a heterologous pentose-metabolizing pathway into Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803 using metabolic engineering approach. This engineered Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803 strain have demonstrated heterotrophic growth on xylose. Work is ongoing in exploring the utility of this new capability for the understanding of metabolic regulations and for the development of new approaches to convert CO2 and biomass sugars to high value products.