Protein profiling of filamentous N2 fixing cyanobacteria for H2 production

Our research project

The overall goal of this project is to explore the potential of cyanobacteria to become efficient producers of H2 as a future energy carrier. Cyanobacteria are prokaryotes, which are able to use solar energy and H2O for H2 production. We are mapping the metabolic processes involved in hydrogen metabolism, with focus to identify and remove bottlenecks in the production. Many different approaches are needed so as to explore the full potential of cyanobacteria as future H2 producers. Our strategy is to use qualitative and quantitative high throughput proteomics for exploring the dynamic changes that takes place in the cells during different growth conditions, and to determine the reprogramming of metabolism when hydrogen metabolism is modified. As model organisms N2fixing filamentous cyanobacteria with fully sequenced and annotated genomes are used, which is a prerequisite for large-scale proteomic work. Shot-gun (non-gel based) as well as gel based proteomics are used. To be able to characterize changes in expression of proteins under different conditions, in specific cell types as well as in engineered strains of cyanobacteria, we use iTRAQ (peptide tagging-method) together with “state of the art”, mass spectrometry.