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Photosynthetic production of biodiesel in Synechocystis sp. PCC6803 transformed with insect or plant fatty acid methyltransferase

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Abstract

Biodiesel contains methyl or ethyl esters of long-chain fatty acids and has recently attracted increasing attention. Microalgae have emerged as a sustainable biodiesel production system owing to their photosynthetic potential. However, the conversion of microalgal biomass to biodiesel requires high energy and is costly. This study aimed to overcome the high cost of the pretreatment process by generating cyanobacteria converting fatty acids to fatty acids methyl ester (FAME) in vivo by introducing the fatty acid methyl ester transferase (FAMT) gene. Two FAMT genes from Drosophila melanogaster and Arabidopsis thaliana were selected and their codons were optimized for insertion in the Synechocystis sp. PCC6803 genome through homologous recombination, respectively. FAMT mRNA and protein expression levels were confirmed through reverse-transcription PCR and western blot analysis, respectively. Furthermore, heterologous expression of the FAMT genes yielded FAME, which was analyzed by gas chromatography. We found that FAMT transformants can be further metabolically optimized and applied for commercial production of biodiesel.

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Acknowledgements

This study was supported by the Basic Core Technology Development Program for the Oceans and the Polar Regions of the National Research Foundation (NRF) funded by the Korea government (Ministry of Science and ICT) (NRF-2016M1A5A1027462) and by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant funded by the Korea government (Ministry of Science and ICT) (NRF-2017R1A2B2002954). Support was also provided by the Basic Science Research Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Education (NRF-2019R1I1A1A01042404). The authors thank Dr. T. Osanai for providing the pTGP0945 plasmid to us.

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  1. Mi-Jin Kang and Seong-Joo Hong Contributed equally to this work

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biological Engineering, Inha University, Incheon, 22212, Republic of Korea

    Mi-Jin Kang, Seong-Joo Hong, Danbi Yoo & Choul-Gyun Lee

  2. Department of Biological Sciences, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Daejeon, 34051, Republic of Korea

    Byung-Kwan Cho

  3. College of Pharmacy, Gachon University, Incheon, 21936, Republic of Korea

    Hookeun Lee

  4. College of Pharmacy, Chung-Ang University, Seoul, 06974, Republic of Korea

    Hyung-Kyoon Choi

  5. Department of Fine Chemical Engineering and Applied Chemistry, Chungnam National University, Daejeon, 34134, Republic of Korea

    Dong-Myung Kim

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  1. Mi-Jin Kang
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Correspondence to Choul-Gyun Lee.

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Kang, MJ., Hong, SJ., Yoo, D. et al. Photosynthetic production of biodiesel in Synechocystis sp. PCC6803 transformed with insect or plant fatty acid methyltransferase. Bioprocess Biosyst Eng 44, 1433–1439 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00449-021-02520-y

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