Published in

American Association for the Advancement of Science, BioDesign Research, (2022), 2022

DOI: 10.34133/2022/9897425

Links

Tools

Export citation

Search in Google Scholar

Altered Carbon Partitioning Enhances CO <sub>2</sub> to Terpene Conversion in Cyanobacteria

Journal article published in 2022 by Man Li, Bin Long, Susie Y. Dai, James W. Golden ORCID, Xin Wang ORCID, Joshua S. Yuan ORCID
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.

Full text: Download

Red circle
Preprint: archiving forbidden
Red circle
Postprint: archiving forbidden
Green circle
Published version: archiving allowed
Data provided by SHERPA/RoMEO

Abstract

Photosynthetic terpene production represents one of the most carbon and energy-efficient routes for converting CO 2 into hydrocarbon. In photosynthetic organisms, metabolic engineering has led to limited success in enhancing terpene productivity, partially due to the low carbon partitioning. In this study, we employed systems biology analysis to reveal the strong competition for carbon substrates between primary metabolism (e.g., sucrose, glycogen, and protein synthesis) and terpene biosynthesis in Synechococcus elongatus PCC 7942. We then engineered key “source” and “sink” enzymes. The “source” limitation was overcome by knocking out either sucrose or glycogen biosynthesis to significantly enhance limonene production via altered carbon partitioning. Moreover, a fusion enzyme complex with geranyl diphosphate synthase (GPPS) and limonene synthase (LS) was designed to further improve pathway kinetics and substrate channeling. The synergy between “source” and “sink” achieved a limonene titer of 21.0 mg/L. Overall, the study demonstrates that balancing carbon flux between primary and secondary metabolism can be an effective approach to enhance terpene bioproduction in cyanobacteria. The design of “source” and “sink” synergy has significant potential in improving natural product yield in photosynthetic species.