US Patent 9,040,264 to ExxonMobil: Recombinant cyanobacterium expressing a transcription factor domain protein

The first published claim of US 9,040,264 :


A recombinant cyanobacterium comprising an exogenous nucleic acid molecule encoding a transcription factor domain protein, wherein the transcription factor domain protein has transcription factor activity and comprises an amino acid sequence having at least 85% amino acid sequence identity to the amino acid sequence of SEQ ID NO:4, SEQ ID NO:6, SEQ ID NO:10, or SEQ ID NO:12, and wherein the recombinant cyanobacterium produces a greater amount of at least one free fatty acid or at least one fatty acid derivative than does a control cyanobacterium that does not comprise the exogenous nucleic acid molecule encoding the transcription factor domain protein, and further wherein the exogenous nucleic acid molecule is operably linked to a promoter that is heterologous relative to the cyanobacterium and/or the exogenous nucleic acid molecule.



The listed inventors:


Kristof; Jessica (Portland, OR), Seshadri; Rekha (San Diego, CA)



Kristof was at Synthetic Genomics from 2007 to 2011. Seshadri was at Synthetic Genomics from 2008 to 2013.

The application leading to US '264 claims benefit of priority to U.S. Provisional application 61/470,178 filed Mar. 31, 2011 entitled "Metabolic Pathway Targeting by Transcription Factor Overexpression."