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Review
. 2013 Sep 26:1:7.
doi: 10.3389/fbioe.2013.00007. eCollection 2013.

Cyanobacteria as a Platform for Biofuel Production

Nicole E Nozzi  1 , John W K Oliver  1 , Shota Atsumi  1
Affiliations
Review

Cyanobacteria as a Platform for Biofuel Production

Nicole E Nozzi et al. Front Bioeng Biotechnol. .

Abstract

Cyanobacteria have great potential as a platform for biofuel production because of their fast growth, ability to fix carbon dioxide gas, and their genetic tractability. Furthermore they do not require fermentable sugars or arable land for growth and so competition with cropland would be greatly reduced. In this perspective we discuss the challenges and areas for improvement most pertinent for advancing cyanobacterial fuel production, including: improving genetic parts, carbon fixation, metabolic flux, nutrient requirements on a large scale, and photosynthetic efficiency using natural light.

Keywords: biofuel; cyanobacteria; metabolic engineering; photosynthesis; synthetic biology.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Challenges in cyanobacterial chemical production. (1) Improving available biological parts at each level of the central dogma for engineering artificial pathways in cyanobacteria; (2) improving carbon fixation; (3), improving metabolic yield with various strategies, A – eliminating competing pathways, B – improving pathway flux, for example via irreversible steps, C – improving tolerance to or continuous removal of the target chemical; (4), management of limited resources that may be stressed upon scale-up; (5), photosynthetic efficiency and bioreactor design.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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