Prof. Julie Zedler, University of Jena

Cyanobacteria are an attractive group of organisms for the development of sustainable industrial processes owed to their genetic tractability and fast phototrophic growth utilizing 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 organization 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 compartmentalization to generate intracellular metabolic hotspots towards whole-cell biocatalysis.