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Comment
. 2020 Dec 3:9:e64380.
doi: 10.7554/eLife.64380.

Increasing the uptake of carbon dioxide

Eric Franklin  1 , Martin Jonikas  1
Affiliations
Comment

Increasing the uptake of carbon dioxide

Eric Franklin et al. Elife. .

Abstract

A mechanism for concentrating carbon dioxide has for the first time been successfully transferred into a species that lacks such a process.

Keywords: E. coli; biochemistry; carbon fixation; carbon-concentrating mechanism; carboxysome; chemical biology; genetic engineering; infectious disease; microbiology; photosynthesis; synthetic biology.

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Conflict of interest statement

EF, MJ No competing interests declared

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.. Engineering a carbon-concentrating mechanism into E. coli.
(A) Halothiobacillus neapolitanus has a carbon-concentrating mechanism that relies on structures called carboxysomes. The cell imports CO2 as bicarbonate (HCO3–), which diffuses into the carboxysome (green hexagon) and is converted into concentrated CO2. The elevated levels of CO2 in the carboxysome allow the enzyme Rubisco (dark green) to convert it to biomass more efficiently. (B) Flamholz et al. engineered a strain of E. coli to be dependent on Rubisco activity for its growth. Rubisco runs slowly in this strain as it can only use CO2 which diffuses (dotted line) into the cell from the atmosphere. (C) However, adding just 20 genes from H. neapolitanus and selecting for cells that can grow in low levels of CO2 led to an E. coli strain with a reconstituted H. neapolitanus carbon-concentrating mechanism based on carboxysomes, which allows Rubisco to run much faster.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Comment on

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