Prof. Julie Zedler, Universität Jena

Cyanobacteria are an attractive group of organisms for the development of sustainable industrial processes owed to their genetic tractability and fast phototrophic growth utilising sunlight as a “free” source of energy. Over the years, engineering cyanobacteria has advanced substantially and their metabolic capacity as cell factories has been demonstrated by the production of a large array of different products. My group has focused on the production of plant natural products and pigments which often requires engineering of multi-enzyme, heterologous metabolic pathways. However, the efficient spatial organisation of heterologous enzymes in cyanobacteria is challenging. I will give an overview of how we have applied concepts from Synthetic Biology for protein targeting and de novo compartmentalisation to generate intracellular metabolic hotspots towards whole-cell biocatalysis.