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Updated: May 11, 2026

Assembly and Quantification of Co-Cultures Combining Heterotrophic Yeast with Phototrophic Sugar-Secreting Cyanobacteria
Published on: December 27, 2024
First evidence of sucrose biosynthesis by single cyanobacterial bimodular proteins
Giselle M A Martínez-Noël1, Andrea C Cumino, María de los Angeles Kolman
1Instituto de Investigaciones en Biodiversidad y Biotecnología (INBIOTEC-CONICET) and Centro de Investigaciones Biológicas, FIBA, 7600 Mar del Plata, Argentina.
Abstract:
The net synthesis of sucrose (Suc) is catalysed by the sequential action of Suc-phosphate synthase (SPS) and Suc-phosphate phosphatase (SPP). SPS and SPP from Anabaena sp. PCC 7120 (7120-SPS and 7120-SPP) define minimal catalytic units. Bidomainal SPSs, where both units are fused, occur in plants and cyanobacteria, but they display only SPS activity. Using recombinant proteins that have fused 7120-SPS and 7120-SPP, we demonstrated that they are bifunctional chimeras and that the arrangement 7120-SPS/SPP is the most efficient to catalyse the sequential reactions to yield Suc. Moreover, we present the first evidence of a bidomainal SPS present in the cyanobacterium Synechococcus elongatus PCC 7942 with both, SPS and SPP activity.
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