"Photanol's technology and patents rely on the genetic manipulation of photosynthetic bacteria, known as cyanobacteria, to become the standard source of renewable, bio-based, chemical commodities. Despite cyanobacteria being attractive platforms for chemical production, their widespread implementation in the global economy has been hindered by myriad factors ranging from insufficient chemical output to concerns about the impact these may have if accidently released into ecosystem. Ongoing efforts within, and beyond, the scope of cTerF are focused on screening and testing multiple cyanobacterial candidates to identify a robust candidate to balance industrially-relevant chemical output without a severe loss of cell fitness. Furthermore, biocontainment efforts are critical in order to allow safe large-scale growth and processing of the genetically manipulated cyanobacteria.
The successful development of cyanobacteria as robust ""cell factories"" to cater to industries from cosmetics to pharmaceutics will be the first necessary step towards supplanting more traditional bio-based, less environmentally-friendly, technologies that rely on sugar-requiring bacteria and even photosynthetic-based platforms such as plants, which can compete with arable land that could otherwise be devoted to the food demands of an ever increasing human populace.
The objective of cTerF was to conduct pilot studies to translate current and novel metabolic engineered pathways into a variety of cyanobacteria in search of a suitable candidate to develop as a ""cell factory"" for the production of chemical commodities such as L-lactate, a widely-used food additive and a feedstock for the production of PLA (poly lactic acid, a bioplastic). In addition to this objective, cTerF explored new avenues for bio-containment of genetically manipulated cyanobacteria that would simultaneously decrease the incidence of contamination by foreign microorganisms capable of metabolizing the target product."
