The greenest diet: Teaching E. coli to live on CO2
The living world is largely divided into autotrophs that convert CO2 into biomass and heterotrophs that consume organic compounds. Can we transform heterotrophs into autotrophs, producing all their carbon mass from CO2?
In the seminar, I will present how we designed, genetically engineered and evolved in the laboratory the model bacteria E. coli to use CO2 as its source of carbon instead of organic compounds. This achievement can contribute to ongoing efforts of renewable energy storage and more sustainable food production.