Can microbes be harnessed to reduce atmospheric loads of greenhouse gases?

Abstract

Reducing atmospheric loads of greenhouse gases (GHGs), especially CO2 and CH4, has been considered the key to alleviating global crises we are facing, such as climate change, sea level elevation and ocean acidification. To this end, development of strategies and technologies for carbon capture, sequestration and utilization (CCSU) is urgently needed. Although physicochemical methods have been the most actively studied in the early stages of developing CCSU technologies, there have recently been growing interests in developing microbe‐based CCSU processes. In this article, we discuss advantages of microbe‐based CCSU technologies over physicochemical approaches and even plant‐based approaches. Next, various parts of the global carbon cycle where microorganisms can contribute, such as sequestering atmospheric GHGs, facilitating the carbon cycle, and slowing down the depletion of carbon reservoirs are described, emphasizing the impacts of microbes on the carbon cycle. Strategies to upgrade microbes and increase their performance in assimilating GHGs or converting GHGs to value‐added chemicals are also provided. Moreover, several examples of exploiting microbes to address environmental crises are discussed. Finally, we discuss things to overcome in microbe‐based CCSU technologies and provide future perspectives.

Base Editing for Reprogramming Cyanobacterium Synechococcus elongatus

“…Considering the relatively long doubling time of S. elongatus (6 -8 h) compared to heterotrophs (48), our method exhibited a great potential to advance and accelerate the synthetic biology of cyanobacteria considerably with minimal time and labor. Editing one nucleotide in a genome is powerful enough to reprogram the metabolism of a microbe.…”

“…Though a segregation step was required to obtain the pure population of the edited strains, the multiplex genome editing saved at least one whole round of editing experiments, including transformation, induction, selection, segregation (optional) and plasmid curing. Considering the relatively long doubling time of S. elongatus (6 – 8 h) compared to heterotrophs (48), our method exhibited a great potential to advance and accelerate the synthetic biology of cyanobacteria considerably with minimal time and labor.…”