James Weifu Lee obtains US 8,986,963 titled Designer calvin-cycle-channeled production of butanol and related higher alcohols

The text of the first claim:

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1. A method for photobiological production of butanol and related higher alcohols comprising: introducing a transgenic photosynthetic organism into a photobiological reactor system, the transgenic photosynthetic organism comprising transgenes coding for a set of enzymes configured to act on certain intermediate products of the Calvin cycle selected from the group consisting of glyceraldehyde 3-phosphate, 3-phosphoglycerate, fructose-1,6-diphosphate and fructose-6-phosphate and to convert the intermediate product into a higher alcohol comprising at least four carbon atoms; using photosynthetically generated NADPH and energy ATP associated with the transgenic photosynthetic organism acquired from photosynthetic water splitting and proton gradient coupled electron transport process in the photobiological reactor to synthesize the higher alcohol from carbon dioxide and water; and using a product separation process to harvest the synthesized alcohol from the photobioreactor, wherein the transgenes coding for a set of enzymes comprises at least one of the designer Calvin-cycle-channeled pathway genes exemplified with exemplary designer DNA constructs of SEQ ID NOS. 58-70 shown in the sequence listings.


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The priority chain:

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This application is a continuation-in-part of co-pending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/918,784 filed on Aug. 20, 2010, which is the National Stage of International Application No. PCT/US2009/034801 filed on Feb. 21, 2009, which claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional Application No. 61/066,845 filed on Feb. 23, 2008, and U.S. Provisional Application No. 61/066,835 filed on Feb. 23, 2008. This application also claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional Application No. 61/426,147 filed on Dec. 22, 2010. The entire disclosures of all of these applications are incorporated herein by reference

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There was an interview with the examiner on 22 Sept. 2014. A variety of rejections had been made in an Office Action of April 2014.