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Scanning electron microscopy image of S. cerevisiae yeast covered in semiconductor nanoparticles
WYSS INSTITUTE AT HARVARD UNIVERSITY
anoparticles of indium phosphide—a semiconducting material used in solar cells—installed onto the surface of Saccharomyces cerevisiae allows the yeast to use light to fuel biosynthetic pathways, according to a report in Science today (November 15). In proof-of-principal experiments, the researchers ramped up the production of shikimic acid, a precursor important for the synthesis of numerous drugs and chemicals.
“They were able to interface the capture of solar energy to the metabolism of the cell and then, through some clever engineering of the cellular metabolism, produce a lot of . . . shikimic acid,” says biochemist Paul King of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Colorado who was not involved in the research. “There’s a lot of ingenuity here,” he adds, “They went across disciplines . . . to create something that makes a ...
