Carboxysomes

Cyanobacteria are bacteria that can fix carbon dioxide. The bacterial microcompartments responsible for this CO2 fixation were recently discovered in the cyanobacteria Synechococcus elongatus. These BMCs were termed carboxysomes and this specific set is called β-carboxysomes (beta).

Synechococcus_elongatus_PCC_7942_electro

These carboxysomes involve BMC-H, BMC-T, and BMC-P all acting as a semipermeable protein shell enclosing the enzyme ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase (Rubisco) and carbonic anhydrase. These enzymes are responsible for carbon dioxide fixation.

It's been done before!

For M. luteus, we could insert the operon for carboxysomes from the bacteria Synechococcus elongatus. This procedure has successfully been done on E. coli. Scientists found the set of genes that code for the icosahedral-shaped structure and inserted it into its DNA. This procedure allowed the bacteria to successfully fix carbon dioxide, but in small amounts. Type I DNA topoisomerase in M. luteus aligns with 73% identity to the topoisomerase in E. coli.

AUTHOR=Fang Yi, Huang Fang, Faulkner Matthew, Jiang Qiuyao, Dykes Gregory F., Yang Mengru, Liu Lu-Ning
TITLE=Engineering and Modulating Functional Cyanobacterial CO2-Fixing Organelles
JOURNAL=Frontiers in Plant Science
VOLUME=9
YEAR=2018
PAGES=739
URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpls.2018.00739
DOI=10.3389/fpls.2018.00739
ISSN=1664-462X