Enhancing the Cellular Robustness of Cyanobacteria to Improve the Stability and Efficiency of Bio-Photovoltaics

Overview

Journal Life (Basel)

Specialty Biology

Date 2025 Feb 26

PMID 40003708

Authors

Xiangyi Yuan

Xuejing Xu

Xuemin Gao

Xiangxiao Liu

Bo Liang

Guodong Luan

Xuefeng Lu

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Solar photovoltaic technology has consistently been regarded as a crucial direction for the development of clean energy systems in the future. Bio-photovoltaics (BPV), an emerging solar energy utilization technology, is mainly based on the photosynthesis process of photoautotrophic organisms to convert solar energy into electrical energy and output a photocurrent via extracellular electron transfer. As the fundamental unit of the bio-photovoltaic system, the stability of photosynthetic microorganisms under fluctuating and stressful light and heat conditions is likely to have a significant influence on the efficiency of bio-photovoltaic devices. However, this aspect has often been overlooked in previous bio-photovoltaics research. This study took an important cyanobacteria chassis strain, PCC 7942, as the model organism and explored the impact of physiological robustness optimization on its performance as a bio-photovoltaic functional unit. In this work, two types of BPV systems, namely the suspension mode and the biofilm attachment mode, were assembled to evaluate the electricity-generating activity of cells. Overall, the latter demonstrated a remarkable photoelectric output performance. When its light and temperature tolerance was enhanced through FoF1-ATP synthase engineering, the optimized strain exhibited stronger photosynthetic physiology and photoelectric output activity. Under the condition of a light intensity of 2400 μmol photons/m/s, the maximum photocurrent output of the -based BPV device was increased significantly by 41% over the system based on the wild-type control strain. The results of this study provided a new perspective for the future development and optimization of bio-photovoltaics.

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