Recent advances in synthetic biology of cyanobacteria
Abstract
Cyanobacteria are attractive hosts that can be engineered for the photosynthetic production of fuels, fine chemicals, and proteins from CO 2. Moreover, the responsiveness of these photoautotrophs towards different environmental signals, such as light, CO 2, diurnal cycle, and metals make them potential hosts for the development of biosensors. However, engineering these hosts proves to be a challenging and lengthy process. Synthetic biology can make the process of biological engineering more predictable through the use of standardized biological parts that are well characterized and tools to assemble them. While significant progress has been made with model heterotrophic organisms, many of the parts and tools are not portable in cyanobacteria. Therefore, efforts are underway to develop and characterize parts derived from cyanobacteria. In this review, we discuss the reported parts and tools with the objective to develop cyanobacteria as cell factories or biosensors. We also discuss the issues related to characterization, tunability, portability, and the need to develop enabling technologies to engineer this "green" chassis.
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Metabolic burden from multi-gene pathway expression reduces growth rate and selects against producing cells.
“metabolic burden from multi-gene pathway expression reduces growth rate and selects against producing cells”
From Cyanobacteria as a Photosynthetic Chassis for Metabolic Pathway Engineering with Heterologous Gene Expression (2026) · cites this paper as [16]
Over the past decade, significant progress has been achieved in the development of genetic tools for cyanobacterial metabolic engineering, including improved transformation methods, modular DNA assembly systems, synthetic promoters, and CRISPR-based genome editing technologies.
“Over the past decade, significant progress has been achieved in the development of genetic tools for cyanobacterial metabolic engineering, including improved transformation methods, modular DNA assembly systems, synthetic promoters, and CRISPR-based genome editing technologies [10,16,17].”
From Cyanobacteria as a Photosynthetic Chassis for Metabolic Pathway Engineering with Heterologous Gene Expression (2026) · cites this paper as [16]
Introducing heterologous enzymes can cause physiological stress to cyanobacterial cells and divert resources away from growth and native metabolic functions.
“Introducing heterologous enzymes can cause physiological stress to cyanobacterial cells and divert resources away from growth and native metabolic functions [16].”
From Cyanobacteria as a Photosynthetic Chassis for Metabolic Pathway Engineering with Heterologous Gene Expression (2026) · cites this paper as [16]
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References 120 · Cited by 78
- Authors
- Sengupta, A., Pakrasi, H. B., & Wangikar, P. P.
- Affiliations
- Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IN)
- Washington University in St. Louis (US)
- Corresponding author
- Wangikar, Pramod P.
- Venue
- Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology
- Published
- 2018-05-09
- Volume
- 102
- Issue
- 13
- Pages
- 5457-5471
- ISSN
- 0175-7598 (ISSN-L)
- 1432-0614
- OpenAlex
- W2801651586
- Cited by
- 78
- References
- 120
- Citations by year
- 2026: 5 · 2025: 4 · 2024: 4 · 2023: 7 · 2022: 14 · 2021: 11 · 2020: 15 · 2019: 14 · 2018: 4
- FWCI
- 1.08
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Licence
- www.springer.com/tdm (tdm)
- Locations
- Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- Department of Biotechnology, Government of India (BT/EB/PAN IIT/2012)
- Indo-US Science and Technology Forum for Indo-US Advanced Bioenergy Consortium (IUSSTF/JCERDC-SGB/IUABC-IITB/2016)
- Office of Science, Department of Energy-BER
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Molecular Biology › Microbial Metabolic Engineering and Bioproduction
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Molecular Biology › Gene Regulatory Network Analysis
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Molecular Biology › Photosynthetic Processes and Mechanisms
- Keywords
- cyanobacteria, synthetic biology, biological parts, chassis engineering, cell factories, biosensors, photosynthetic carbon fixation, biofuels, fine chemicals, protein production, diurnal cycle
- MeSH terms
- Cyanobacteria, Genetic Engineering, Photosynthesis, Biosensing Techniques, Biofuels, Synthetic Biology
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