Eco-Nfix: Engineering nitrogen fixation in a fast-growing cyanobacterium for sustainable bio-fertilizer production

Nitrogen fertilizer is indispensable in agriculture as plants are unable to use atmospheric nitrogen (N2).

Ammonia (NH3) is one of the most produced inorganic chemicals in the world because it is the major nitrogen fertilizer precursor.

Unfortunately, the current industrial production of NH3 relies on natural gas and a process that results in high energy consumption and pollution.

The short-term goal of this project is to establish a novel biological method for NH3 production using a marine photosynthetic microorganism.

The long-term goal is to generate an efficient and robust N2 fixation machinery that could be incorporated directly into crops, thereby eliminating the reliance on fertilizers in the future.

To address the short term goal, we will engineer a fast-growing marine cyanobacterium to produce ammonia using sunlight, seawater, CO2, and N2.

Then we will create and screen two large mutant libraries to identify genes that are important for improving productivity.

To reach the long term goal, we will use the power of machine learning to fine-tune the unique nitrogen-fixing enzyme, nitrogenase, using cyanobacteria as the host organism.

Given that cyanobacteria are directly evolutionarily connected to plant chloroplasts, this approach will prepare nitrogenase for future integration into crop genomes.

This project could contribute to the sustainable production of fertilizers, and will provide valuable insights for further engineering of nitrogen fixation in plants.