Engineering isoprene synthesis in cyanobacteria

Abstract

The renewable production of isoprene (Isp) hydrocarbons, to serve as fuel and synthetic chemistry feedstock, has attracted interest in the field recently. Isp (C H ) is naturally produced from sunlight, CO and H O photosynthetically in terrestrial plant chloroplasts via the terpenoid biosynthetic pathway and emitted in the atmosphere as a response to heat stress. Efforts to institute a high capacity continuous and renewable process have included heterologous expression of the Isp synthesis pathway in photosynthetic microorganisms. This review examines the premise and promise emanating from this relatively new research effort. Also examined are the metabolic engineering approaches applied in the quest of renewable Isp hydrocarbons production, the progress achieved so far, and barriers encountered along the way.

Respiration, Rather Than Photosynthesis, Determines Rice Yield Loss Under Moderate High-Temperature Conditions

“…Such crops not only would have better energy utilization efficiency, reduced carbon loss, and increased yields but would also help to reduce greenhouse gas production as global warming increases. Engineering of isoprene synthesis has been reported in Cyanobacteria ( Chaves and Melis, 2018 ), Escherichia coli ( Liu et al, 2019 ; Lee et al, 2020 ), and Saccharomyces cerevisiae ( Lv et al, 2016 ) but not in field crops.…”

Emerging Technologies in Algal Biotechnology: Toward the Establishment of a Sustainable, Algae-Based Bioeconomy

“…This could be averted with microalgae engineered to produce these chemicals in higher concentrations than is possible in plants (Arendt et al, 2016;Moses et al, 2017;Vavitsas et al, 2018;Lauersen, 2019). Cyanobacteria, for example, have been widely used for heterologous plant-derived terpenoid engineering, extensively reviewed in Chaves and Melis (2018) and Lin and Pakrasi (2019), and proof-of-concept works have unveiled the potential of engineered eukaryotic microalgae such as C. reinhardtii in producing high value terpenoids such as the food flavoring and aromas sesquiterpenoid patchulol and (E)α-bisabolene (Lauersen et al, 2016;Wichmann et al, 2018) and diterpenoids such as casbene, taxadiene, and 13R(+)manoylnyl oxide , as well as lambdane diterpenoids (Papaefthimiou et al, 2019), which are relevant precursors of plant-derived therapeutic and cosmetic products. Similarly, the diatom P. tricornutum is currently being explored for similar applications and demonstrated its potential in producing triterpenoid lupeol and traces of betulin, precursors of the topoisomerase inhibitor betulinic acid (D'Adamo et al, 2019), commonly used in anticancer and antiviral pharmaceutical preparations and naturally produced in trace amounts from the bark of plant species, such as the white birch tree (Pisha et al, 1995).…”

Recent advances in synthetic biology of cyanobacteria for improved chemicals production

“…In addition, terpenoids are the largest group of plant secondary metabolites, which have been engineered as primary metabolic pathway products in cyanobacteria strains. Several previous review articles have well summarized a number of successful efforts in development of cyanobacterial platforms for production of terpenoids [ 11 , 112 , 113 ]. Recently, attempts were further given to the optimization of yield of the heterologous production of terpenoids in the engineered cyanobacterial strains.…”