PNNL discovers why certain blue-green algae grows super fast under relentless bright light

In Washington state, while relentless bright light brings many forms of cyanobacteria to their knees — figuratively, of course — Synechococcus sp. PCC 7002 does the opposite, thriving and growing at a rate that far outpaces most of its peers. That makes the organism, commonly called a form of blue-green algae, an attractive target for scientists and engineers trying to create better, less expensive biofuels or develop tools for churning out custom chemicals.

Now researchers have figured out why Synechococcus 7002 is so robust. The organism triples in size to accommodate a rapid expansion of the cellular machinery it uses to build proteins, the workhorses of cells. The organism flourishes under intense light by using the energy to keep growing.

The findings by scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, in collaboration with scientists from several other institutions, appear July 26 in the online journal mBio.