Zuvachem's US 8,609,385 on a method to make isoprene from genetically engineered cyanobacteria

The first claim:



A method for the production of isoprene, the method comprising: culturing a genetically engineered cyanobacterium comprising a nucleic acid encoding a plant isoprene synthase in a bioreactor to produce isoprene,

said nucleic acid comprising a sequence that has at least 90% identity to the nucleic acid sequence of SEQ ID NO: 16, wherein said bioreactor contains a water immiscible organic solvent, and the isoprene is trapped in said solvent.


Within the specification:


Aspects of the invention relate to culturing cyanobacteria. All characterized species of cyanobacteria have been successfully cultured on at least the laboratory scale. Many of these grow on standard medium for "blue green algae" such as BG-11 (ATCC medium 616). Also, many specialized culture media have been developed. Thus, cyanobacteria can be cultured in standard or specialized media,



From Example 4:


Briefly, a synthetic isoprene synthase gene, cloned into the vector pUC57 as a PstI/KpnI fragment (FIG. 6), was constructed. Selected alterations of the poplar enzyme coding sequence to remove certain restriction enzyme sites and to substitute rare codons (based on T. elongatus BP-1 codon usage) for more common ones, as well as several other base changes, are indicated by underlining. The start (ATG) and stop (TAA) codons are indicated in bold.