With rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, there is a pressing need to develop more sustainable sources of fuels and chemical feedstocks. Metabolic engineering has enabled the production of fuels and chemical feedstocks from carbohydrates (corn starch, cellulose, etc.) using microbes such as <i>E.coli </i>and yeast. Another alternative biological production route is to use cyanobacteria to directly convert carbon dioxide and light into useful products. However, a major obstacle in the development of high yielding cyanobacterial production strains is a lack of advanced genome engineering tools. Therefore, we are developing tools which will enable us to perform genome-wide searches to identify genes which confer desirable phenotypes and streamline genome editing.

Development of advanced genome engineering tools for a model cyanobacterium

251st National Meeting (2016)

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