Towards the production of sustainable biofuels using cyanobacteria

Abstract

Desarrolla en in silico un ensamble con biobricks que permita replicar una ruta metabólica capaz de producir terpenos de alto valor para la producción de bisaboleno como precursor de jet fuel en la cianobacteria synechocystis PCC 6803. Para este fin, se usa un software en la nube (benchling) que permita usar diferentes partes biológicas como promoters, RBS, codificador de proteínas, terminadores y plásmidos, para crear un dispositivo biológico capaz de replicarse dentro de un plásmido que contendrá todas las partes biológicas mencionadas. Este plásmido será construido usando el estándar de ensamblaje de biobricks con la finalidad de que pueda adherirse al ADN del synechocystis PCC 6803 mediante las secuencias enzimáticas de los prefijos y sufijos que tienen en común. Una vez el ADN del plásmido se una al ADN del synechocystis, esta ultima será capaz de codificar la secuencia de proteínas capaz de producir el bisaboleno como producto principal.

Fossil fuels have been used for centuries as a main source of energy, despite the pollutants that fossil fuels generated in the environment. New alternatives, as biofuels, have arisen as alternatives to diminish the environmental impact, but there are some drawbacks that need to be tackled. To date, biofuels from microorganisms, as known as third-generation biofuels, have drawn attention to researchers owing to the capability to generate biofuels by modifying the genetic material of different microorganisms. Many microorganism consortia to produce biofuels have been studied, but cyanobacteria -a microalgae- have shown to be more sustainable to generate biofuels owing to their similarities to plant chloroplasts to perform photosynthesis. Indeed, cyanobacteria contain the MEP pathway that is a metabolic route to biosynthesise terpenoids. However, the most studied cyanobacterium strain has been Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803. Synechocystis has been studied and engineered to produce terpenoids as squalene, bisabolene, and limonene. To date, bisabolene seems to be more suitable to replace some fossil fuels owing to their physical chemistry properties. However, few studies have been reported to produce bisabolene. This work has been developed to biosynthesise in in silico a construct of a biological device containing both biological elements and a plasmid vector. This biological device is capable of enhancing the yield of bisabolene inside of Synechocystis as a host organism.