Applying synthetic biology tools to non-model microbes to address chemical sustainability

Finding a sustainable alternative for today’s petrochemical industry is a major challenge facing chemical engineers and society at large. To be sustainable, routes for converting carbon dioxide and light into organic compounds for use as both fuels and chemical building blocks must be identified, understood, and engineered. Advances in metabolic engineering, synthetic biology, and other bioengineering disciplines have expanded the scope of what can be produced in a living organism. As in other engineering disciplines, synthetic biologists want to apply a general understanding of science (e.g. microbiology, biochemistry) to construct complex systems from well-characterized parts (e.g. DNA, protein). Here, I will discuss my groups efforts to engineer photosynthetic cyanobacteria and nitrogen-fixing rhizobia to improve the photosynthetic production of chemical products.