Scientists at the Max Planck Institute have developed a synthetic pathway that can capture CO2 from the air more efficiently than in nature, and shown how to implement it into living bacteria. The technique could help make biofuels and other products in a sustainable way.
In the new study, Max Planck scientists developed a brand new CO2-fixation pathway that works even better than nature’s own tried-and-true method. They call it the THETA cycle.
The cycle is built around the two fastest known CO2-fixing enzymes – which were isolated from bacteria. Even though each of these alone is more than 10 times faster at capturing CO2 than the primary enzyme plants use, evolution doesn’t seem to have naturally paired them up yet. So, the scientists did instead.The researchers optimized it over several rounds of experiments to boost its yield 100 times over.
The 17-step process is currently too complicated for one cell to handle, so the team split it up into three modules and incorporated these into E. coli. Sure enough, each module worked as hoped. The next step is to squeeze it all into one, but this will require synchronizing each step with the natural metabolism of E. coli.
In the meantime though, this milestone is still important, the team says. The technique could be adapted to instruct microbes to produce a whole range of valuable compounds.
From:New Atlas
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