Cyanobacterial biofactories: combining evolved and synthetic genetic regulatory mechanisms to yield carbon-neutral bioproducts

Abstract

While cyanobacteria hold the promise of producing useful bioproducts from little more than sunlight and carbon dioxide, their economic feasibility hinges on developing better mechanisms to manipulate gene expression in order to divert photosynthate towards product formation. A recent report demonstrates how combining simple feedback loops can improve the dynamic range of target gene expression while utilizing progressively lower concentrations of chemical inducers. As an extension of this work, we propose that utilizing regulatory elements that respond to changing temperatures could circumvent the need for exogenous chemical inducers, maintaining low background expression under non-induced conditions, and enhancing dynamic range via temperature induction of cyanobacterial cultures on an industrial scale.