FURI | Fall 2019

Engineering High Yield Production of L-Serine in Cyanobacteria

Cyanobacteria have the potential to efficiently produce L-serine, an industrially important amino acid, directly from CO₂ and sunlight, which is a more sustainable and cheaper source of energy as compared to current methods. The research aims to maximize the production of L-serine in a metabolically engineered strain of cyanobacteria by optimizing the expression levels of the serA and serine exporter genes, optimizing the growth conditions, and investigating the effects of nitrogen supplementation. The L-serine levels will be tracked using gas chromatography. The work can be extended by the deletion of genes that are involved in the amino acid’s degradation.