Date: Monday 6 October
Venue: Panton Arms
Time: 6-8pm
Café Synthetique is the monthly meetup for the Cambridge synthetic and engineering biology community with informal talks, discussion and pub snacks. Speakers range from students and group leaders to industry professionals and entrepreneurs.
Spaces are limited, register to attend here.
This month's edition welcomes the following talks:
Fuelling the Future with Cyanobacteria: Synthetic Biology Tools for Rewiring Photosynthesis
Dr Angelo Joshua Victoria, Department of Chemistry
Abstract: Cyanobacteria have long been considered as “green factories” in biotechnology due to their capability for oxygenic photosynthesis, converting sunlight and CO2 into industrially useful products. However, slow growth and low biomass accumulation of model strains have limited the use of cyanobacteria at scale. This talk describes the characterisation of a comprehensive suite of synthetic biology tools to enable the engineering of the recently discovered strain Synechococcus sp. PCC 11901, currently one of the fastest growing cyanobacteria with remarkably high biomass accumulation. As a proof of concept, we successfully engineered this strain to produce the sesquiterpenoid bisabolene, a high-value compound used across the cosmetics, pharmaceutical, and chemical industries.
Additionally, I describe the ongoing work in the PhotoBioElectro Group, learning from state-of-the-art engineering biology and electrochemistry tools to dissect and understand the yet relatively uncharacterised extracellular electron transport (EET) pathways in the model strain Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803. We apply a genome-wide CRISPR interference (CRISPRi) library screen to uncover novel genes involved in EET and utilise these as targets to rewire photosynthesis and improve photocurrent generation in engineered strains. Using this interdisciplinary toolkit, we aim to explore new ways to couple the biology of photosynthesis with renewable energy technologies.
Green Biomanufacturing through Light-Driven Inorganic–Biological Systems
Dr Lin Su, Queen Mary University of London
Abstract: Green biomanufacturing requires innovative platforms that integrate renewable energy with engineered biology to achieve sustainable carbon upcycling. Here, I will present two complementary strategies that combine adaptive microbial systems with light-driven catalysis for the valorisation of CO₂. In the first approach, we establish an abiotic–biotic domino pathway that links photocatalytic CO₂-to-syngas conversion with adaptive laboratory evolution (ALE) of Clostridium ljungdahlii. The evolved strain exhibits a 120-fold increase in C₂ production, enabling efficient solar-powered conversion of CO₂ into acetate and ethanol. In the second approach, we develop a semi-artificial photosynthetic system that couples renewable formate synthesis with an autotrophic Escherichia coli platform. ALE accelerated growth kinetics, while integration with a “semi-artificial leaf” enabled in situ microbial growth directly from light-generated formate.