Producing biohydrogen on a commercial scale will likely require the genetic re-engineering of natural hydrogen-producing organisms. Kinetic modeling of hydrogen-producing metabolic pathways can cost-effectively help to characterize systemic (e.g., mass/energy/charge conservation) constraints in these organisms. In vitro kinetic studies suggest that the activity of the hydrogenases in several photolytic biohydrogen producers (PBPs) could be increased to as much as four times their nominal in vivo rate. It is much less clear, however, whether the in vitro activity maximum could be realized in vivo. In An S-system Parameter Sensitivity Analysis of Biohydrogen Production by the Microalga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii I use an S-system photosynthesis-based PBP (PS-PBP) simulator to survey the sensitivity of C. reinhardtii to variation in system parameters. The analysis strongly suggests that the H2 production efficiency of the alga cannot be increased by more than a factor of two through single-enzyme genetic modifications.
The file whose title is underscored in the above was last modified on 4 January 2019/1517 US Central Time.
This page was last modified on 11 March 2019/1841 US Central Time.