FURI | Spring 2021

Flux Balance Analysis of Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803 for the Production of D-lactate

Flux Balance Analysis (FBA) is a computational approach to simulate the flux of metabolic pathways in genome-scale metabolic networks in organisms such as cyanobacteria. COBRA toolbox is used to predict the growth rate and production of substances (i.e. lactate) in the presence of single or multiple substrates in a cyanobacterium, Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803. Current results show increased lactate production with the inclusion of a glycerol dehydrogenase enzyme (GlyDH*) as a heterologous pathway to facilitate D-lactate formation. Future work will focus on flux analysis that will lead to lactate synthesis in the presence of multiple substrates.