Starch Biosynthesis in E.coli
In plants, green algae, and cyanobacteria, the most important storage molecule is starch. It has a huge quarternary structure consisting of 30% amylose and 70% amylopectin subunits. Compared to its counterpart in animals and bacteria, glycogen, starch is less branched. Nevertheless, this seemingly unimportant change makes it of paramount importance in a variety of industrial areas including but not limited to papermaking, oil exploration, and hydrogen production. More significantly, starch, as a carbon resource for secondary generation fuel, is promising for the future of bioenergy.
Today’s research focuses on improving starch yield in plants by transfering ADPglucose pyrophosphorylase of E.coli to plants. Since starch in plants can also be used as a food source, it occurred to us that it is a better idea to use recombinant E.coli for purposes of bioenergy.
Thus, we aim to make recombinant E.coli which produces starch instead of glycogen. In order to do this, we need to replace glycogen production genes in E.coli by starch production genes of Zea maize (corn).
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