The project “Hydrocarbon production in genetically engineered cyanobacteria” was co-conducted by Prof. LU Xuefeng from QIBEBT and Prof. Wolfgang Hess from Albert-Ludwigs-University, German.

It aims to improve the production efficiency of hydrocarbons in cyanobacteria and cyanobacteria potential for biotechnology applications and biofuels production. The main tasks include (1) screening enzymes with higher catalytic efficiency by directed evolution; (2) screening the suitable promoters for over-expression of hydrocarbon-producing pathway genes; (3) identifying the regulators responsible for gene expression pattern under different culture conditions.

Another project “Development of a novel single-cell omics platform for the investigation of microbial population heterogeneity during stress adaptation” was led by Prof. NING Kang from QIBEBT and Dr. Ansgar Potsch from Plant Biochemistry at Ruhr University, Bochum.

The project is to develop a single-cell omics platform to investigate the microbial population heterogeneity on the single cell level during adaptation and evolution via multidisciplinary integration of bioinformatics, single-cell technology, and biochemistry. It is expected to provide substantially new insight into fundamental physiological processes in microorganisms as well as to accelerate the development of superior strains for industrial biotechnology by fast screening of genotypes and phenotypes of microbial populations.

The two joint research projects are under the framework of the Sino-German Symposium on Metabolic Engineering & Advanced Biofuels jointly hosted by QIBEBT and Technical University, Munich in June 2012.

SGC was jointly established by National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) and Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), Germany in 2000. NSFC and DFG invest 10 million yuan each annually to the Center to sponsor the cooperation and exchanges between scientists from the two countries.