A recent study undertaken by researchers from Purdue University, Washington University in St. Louis, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) and published in the journal, Molecular BioSystems will improve the efforts in generating biofuel and other green energy sources from cyanobacteria, also known as blue-green algae.
The research received grant from Membrane Biology Grand Challenge as a part of Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory (EMSL) of the Department of Energy. The challenge prompted the scientist to make an attempt to unveil the network of proteins and genes that are responsible for fixing nitrogen and photosynthesis in cyanobacteria, which shares its characters with plants as well as microbes.
The Cyanothece cell performs the functions of photosynthesis and nitrogen fixing by switching between the functions every 12 hours. While it is engaged in the process of making sugar during day time, it is engaged in breaking down the sugar to fix nitrogen and produce other chemical compounds.
According to Jason McDermott, computational biologist at PNNL, the research is zeroed on to find out which genes induces Cyanothece to cease and start the operations of photosynthesis and other energy generation functions and what makes Cyanothece to perform the functions. To overcome the problems and the time consuming process in identifying the bottlenecks and how the removal of such bottlenecks influence the daily life of Cyanothece, the researchers have introduced a computer model.
The researchers are looking forward to authenticate the developed model with further lab tests to check the reactions of bottleneck genes and use the results for further researches in nitrogen fixation and photosynthesis process in cynobacteria to design efficient bioenergy production methods.
Source: http://www.pnl.gov/