Engineering cyanobacterial carbonic anhydrase surface mutations for fast CO2 hydration and capture
- 1Chemical Sciences Division Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Berkeley CA 94720 USA
- 2Molecular Biophysics & Integrated Bio-imaging Division Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Berkeley CA 94720 USA
- 3Carbon Negative Initiative Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Berkeley CA 94720 USA
Abstract
Equilibration between CO2 and the other forms of dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) is slow under ambient conditions, bottlenecked by the hydration of dissolved CO2 to form bicarbonate and a proton. This step is often rate-limiting for aqueous CO2 capture processes under ambient temperature and pressure, and is precisely the chemistry catalyzed by the family of carbonic anhydrase enzymes. As a result, incorporation of carbonic anhydrases (CAs) into various CO2 capture schemes may be used to accelerate CO2 hydration, increasing the rates of downstream processes coupled to this DIC equilibrium. While this potential use for CA has been long-studied, extending these basic chemical principles to real applications have been hampered by practical questions of how to economically source carbonic anhydrase enzymes at mass scale. This work explores the use of modified cyanobacterial expression hosts as a potential resolution to that problem. Successful engineering of carbonic anhydrase surface display in fast-growing, marine cyanobacteria would yield a self-sustaining CO2 hydration catalyst that requires only sunlight, CO2 itself, and nutrients freely available in seawater, as inputs for passively generating carbonic anhydrases on the cell envelope during cell growth.
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BibTeX
@article{agbo2026engineering,
title = {{Engineering cyanobacterial carbonic anhydrase surface mutations for fast CO2 hydration and capture}},
author = {Peter Agbo},
journal = {RSC Advances},
year = {2026},
month = nov,
doi = {10.1039/d6ra05179k},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1039/d6ra05179k},
note = {CC BY-NC 3.0},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - Engineering cyanobacterial carbonic anhydrase surface mutations for fast CO2 hydration and capture
AU - Peter Agbo
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/11/04
JO - RSC Advances
DO - 10.1039/d6ra05179k
UR - https://doi.org/10.1039/d6ra05179k
AB - Equilibration between CO2 and the other forms of dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) is slow under ambient conditions, bottlenecked by the hydration of dissolved CO2 to form bicarbonate and a proton. This step is often rate-limiting for aqueous CO2 capture processes under ambient temperature and pressure, and is precisely the chemistry catalyzed by the family of carbonic anhydrase enzymes. As a result, incorporation of carbonic anhydrases (CAs) into various CO2 capture schemes may be used to accelerate CO2 hydration, increasing the rates of downstream processes coupled to this DIC equilibrium. While this potential use for CA has been long-studied, extending these basic chemical principles to real applications have been hampered by practical questions of how to economically source carbonic anhydrase enzymes at mass scale. This work explores the use of modified cyanobacterial expression hosts as a potential resolution to that problem. Successful engineering of carbonic anhydrase surface display in fast-growing, marine cyanobacteria would yield a self-sustaining CO2 hydration catalyst that requires only sunlight, CO2 itself, and nutrients freely available in seawater, as inputs for passively generating carbonic anhydrases on the cell envelope during cell growth.
SN - 2046-2069
ER -