Approaches in the Photosynthetic Production of Sustainable Fuels by Cyanobacteria using Tools of Synthetic Biology

Abstract

Cyanobacteria, photosynthetic prokaryotic microorganisms having a simple genetic composition are the prospective photoautotrophic cell factories for the production of a wide range of biofuel molecules. Simple genetic composition of cyanobacteria allows effortless genetic manipulation which leads to increased research endeavour from the synthetic biology approach. An improved development of synthetic biology tools, genetic modification methods and advancement in transformation techniques to construct a strain which can contain multiple target genes in single operon will vastly expand the functions that can be used for engineering photosynthetic cyanobacteria for the generation of biofuels. In this review, recent advancements and approaches in synthetic biology tools and biofuel production by metabolically engineered cyanobacteria have been discussed. Various fuel molecules like isoprene, limonene, α-farnesene, squalene, alkanes, butanol and fatty acids which can be a substitute of petroleum and fossil fuels in future have been elaborated.