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From 2012.igem.org

Background

Synechocystis PCC6803 as a model chassis

Cyanobacteria have been the first truly photosynthetic microorganisms to appear on earth about 2.4 billion years ago. (ref:Evolution of photosynthesis. Hohmann-Marriott MF, Blankenship RE.)With the emergence of synthetic biology and new genetic tools it is of no surprise that many research groups are using cyanobacteria as a chassis suitable for a range of aplications. They include: detection of water soluble pollutants and commodity chemicals production (reference)

Among the many qualities of synechocystis there are two of them that provided us an interesting opportunity to develop an iGEM project. First, being a photosynthetic organism, each culture is, at least for an important time span, a self sustainable system. Second, cyanobacteria are the only prokaryotic organisms to exhibit circadian behaviour. Moreover, the principal proteins involved in the process have been characterised in synechococcus as well as the cyclic expression pattern in synechocystis. (reference)