Engineering self-assembled bioreactors from protein microcompartments
- Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States)
The goals of this research are to understand how organisms such as bacteria segregate certain metabolic processes inside of specific structures, or “microcompartments,” in the cell and apply this knowledge to develop novel engineered microcompartments for use in nanotechnology and metabolic engineering. For example, in some bacteria, self-assembling protein microcompartments called carboxysomes encapsulate the enzymes involved in carbon fixation, enabling the cell to utilize carbon dioxide more effectively than if the enzymes were free in the cell. The proposed research will determine how structures such as carboxysomes assemble and function in bacteria and develop a means for creating novel, synthetic microcompartments for optimizing production of specific energy-rich compounds.
- Research Organization:
- Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES)
- DOE Contract Number:
- SC0006394
- OSTI ID:
- 1328679
- Report Number(s):
- DOE-UC-0006394
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
Similar Records
Production and characterization of synthetic carboxysome shells with incorporated luminal proteins
Bacterial microcompartment assembly: The key role of encapsulation peptides