earticle

영어

There have been many attempts to produce hydrogen gas in fermentative bacteria such as E .coli, the most common biosynthetic system, as a solution for the energy crisis. Previously, we demonstrated successful biohydrogen production in recombinant E. coli expressing [NiFe]-hydrogenase 1. Although [NiFe]-hydrogenase 1 showed relatively high oxygen-tolerance
compared to other hydrogenases, especially [FeFe]-hydrogenases, the hydrogen production was still unsatisfactory in terms of both the efficiency and the amount. In this work, we introduced photoreceptor into the recombinant E. coli strain so that this fermentative bacterium
can exploit light energy for producing hydrogen. As the photoreceptor system, we chose proteorhodopsin and concomitant retinal synthesizing enzymes which are required for the synthesis of the retinal prosthetic group. We found that biohydrogen production efficiency was increased with the photoreceptor introduced-recombinant E. coli. We also investigated the correlation between the light intensity and the amount of hydrogen production. In conclusion, introducing photoreceptor in E. coli is a prominent strategy for enhancing biohydrogen production in light condition.