Vibrio natriegens: A New Synthetic Biology Workhorse for Efficient Electromicrobial Production

Moonshot Award

Patent or Technology Development

Abstract

Carbon dioxide (CO2) and its one-carbon (C-1) derivatives are promising feedstocks for the sustainable production of valuable commodities, including biofuels, polymer precursors, biolixiviants for biomining, and sugars. However, current technologies are limited by low efficiencies and high energy demand. Electromicrobial production (EMP) enables efficient valorization of CO2 and C-1 compounds by integrating biotic and abiotic processes, using renewable electricity to power microbial metabolism. Among possible C-1 EMP feedstocks, formate is especially interesting because it can be electrochemically produced from CO2 and is miscible in water, but it requires a robust, genetically tractable biological chassis. 

As envisioned by the Moonshot Grant awarded to the Barstow lab in 2023, we are engineering the naturally competent Vibrio natriegens to assimilate formate via the highly efficient reductive glycine pathway (rGlyP). In this work, we introduced multiple genomic knockouts in V. natriegens to create metabolic dependence on rGlyP, and constructed and tested a plasmid-based expression library toward enabling growth on formate and CO2 as sole carbon sources. 

These advances lay the groundwork for developing V. natriegens as a robust chassis for EMP applications.