MORE | Spring 2021

Engineering High Yield Production of L-Serine in Cyanobacterium Synechococcus sp. PCC 7002

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 inexpensive source of energy as compared to current methods. The research aims to engineer a strain of cyanobacteria that increases L-serine production by mutating regulatory mechanisms that natively inhibit its production, encoding the optimal serine exporter, and removing genes responsible for its degradation. The work can be extended by tuning gene expression levels, optimizing growth conditions, and investigating the effects of nitrogen supplementation for the strain.