The role of systems biology in developing non-model cyanobacteria as hosts for chemical production

Cyanobacteria, a group of photosynthetic prokaryotes, can be engineered for direct conversion of carbon dioxide to value added products. Despite two decades of progress in the metabolic engineering of these photoautotrophs, the reported productivities are below those needed for commercialization. While much of this work has been performed with a handful of model cyanobacteria, new fast-growing and robust cyanobacterial strains may afford significant improvements in productivity. The focus now is on isolating and developing cyanobacteria that can be deployed as industrial strains for the production of a wide range of chemicals. Systems-level characterization, development of synthetic biology tools and improvement in photosynthetic efficiency would be an integral part of host engineering efforts. The knowledge base that exists for model cyanobacteria together with the systems biology data from newer strains will provide the foundation for the development of new hosts.