Solar-powered multi-organism symbiont mimic system for beyond natural synthesis of polypeptides from CO2 and N2 | Science Advances
Abstract
Developing artificial symbionts beyond natural synthesis limitations would bring revolutionary contributions to agriculture, medicine, environment, etc. Here, we initiated a solar-driven multi-organism symbiont, which was assembled by the CO
2
fixation module of
Synechocystis
sp., N
2
fixation module of
Rhodopseudomonas palustris
, biofunctional polypeptides synthesis module of
Bacillus licheniformis
, and the electron transfer module of conductive cationic poly(fluorene-
co
-phenylene) derivative. The modular design broke the pathway to synthesize γ-polyglutamic acid (γ-PGA) using CO
2
and N
2
, attributing to the artificially constructed direct interspecific substance and electron transfer. So, the intracellular ATP and NADPH were enhanced by 69 and 30%, respectively, and the produced γ-PGA was enhanced by 104%. The strategy was further extended to produce a commercial antibiotic of bacitracin A. These achievements improve the selectivity and yield of functional polypeptides with one click by CO
2
and N
2
, and also provide an innovative strategy for creating photosynthetic systems on demand.