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Evolutionary Engineering of Cyanobacteria to Enhance the Production of α‑Farnesene from CO2
journal contribution
posted on 2019-12-02, 22:29 authored by Napisa Pattharaprachayakul, Hyun Jeong Lee, Aran Incharoensakdi, Han Min WooPhotosynthetic cyanobacteria can fix CO2 and
utilize
it as the sole carbon source for cell growth and production of biochemicals.
Here, we metabolically engineered Synechococcus elongatus PCC 7942 for an enhanced production of α-farnesene by optimizing
the ribosome-binding site (RBS) of the codon-optimized farnesene synthase
gene. The production of α-farnesene was found to be enhanced
in strains with a low translation initiation rate, resulting in α-farnesene
production (0.57 mg/(L day)). Using the RBS variants and random mutations,
we performed fluorescence-based analysis of cells grown in 96-well
culture plates to screen the α-farnesene-producing strains but
could not improve the titers of the RBS-optimized strains. However,
evolutionary engineering of the RBS-optimized strains resulted in
a twofold increase in α-farnesene production (1.2 mg/(L day))
compared to the previous study. Therefore, combining metabolic and
evolutionary engineering might be helpful for enhancing the cellular
fitness of cyanobacteria for the production of target chemicals.