Sapphire Energy aims to transform photosynthesis in new research

In California, Sapphire Energy announced that Nucleic Acids Research Journal has published its white paper, “An exogenous chloroplast genome for complex sequence manipulation in algae.”  Chloroplast genomes present a unique opportunity for the field of synthetic biology. In a single, relatively small molecule, they encode the most important genes of photosynthesis, nature’s principle method for converting sunlight into chemical energy.

These naturally minimized, manipulable genomes are of great interest for metabolic engineering for foods, fuels, and myriad bio-products, and are ideally suited target for synthetic biology.