posted on 2022-12-23, 18:37authored byWen Yu, Mariia V. Pavliuk, Aijie Liu, Yue Zeng, Shengpeng Xia, Yiming Huang, Haotian Bai, Fengting Lv, Haining Tian, Shu Wang
Organic semiconductor–microbial photosynthetic
biohybrid
systems show great potential in light-driven biosynthesis. In such
a system, an organic semiconductor is used to harvest solar energy
and generate electrons, which can be further transported to microorganisms
with a wide range of metabolic pathways for final biosynthesis. However,
the lack of direct electron transport proteins in existing microorganisms
hinders the hybrid system of photosynthesis. In this work, we have
designed a photosynthetic biohybrid system based on transmembrane
electron transport that can effectively deliver the electrons from
organic semiconductor across the cell wall to the microbe. Biocompatible
organic semiconductor polymer dots (Pdots) are used as photosensitizers
to construct a ternary synergistic biochemical factory in collaboration
with Ralstonia eutrophaH16 (RH16) and electron shuttle neutral red (NR). Photogenerated
electrons from Pdots promote the proportion of nicotinamide adenine
dinucleotide phosphate (NADPH) through NR, driving the Calvin cycle
of RH16 to convert CO2 into poly-3-hydroxybutyrate
(PHB), with a yield of 21.3 ± 3.78 mg/L, almost 3 times higher
than that of original RH16. This work provides a
concept of an integrated photoactive biological factory based on organic
semiconductor polymer dots/bacteria for valuable chemical production
only using solar energy as the energy input.