Highly Cited Paper: Cyanobacteria as Photosynthetic Machinery For Industrial Biotechnology

Cyanobacteria are the only prokaryotes that perform plant-like oxygenic photosynthesis! As hosts for biotechnological applications, cyanobacteria offer advantages: simple growth requirements, ease of genetic manipulation, and carbon-neutral production platforms. An emerging field of interest is the use of photosynthetic cyanobacteria to directly convert carbon dioxide into biofuels. Cyanobacteria are promising tools for bioremediation and wastewater treatment. Cyanobacteria are able to produce a spectrum of bioactive compounds of pharmaceutical and agricultural significance and are sources of high-value chemicals, such as pigments, vitamins, and enzymes. The use of cyanobacteria for the production of biofuels, bioactive compounds, high-value chemicals and as tools for aquatic bioremediation as well as recent progress in engineering cyanobacteria for these applications was summarized in the review ‘Cyanobacteria: Photoautotrophic Microbial Factories for the Sustainable Synthesis of Industrial Products’.



source: http://www.hindawi.com/journals/bmri/2015/754934/