Growing amino acids in bulk?

[Francesco Capodieci]

I had an idle thought that a bacterial symbiosis of Rhodopseudomonas palustris and Corynebacterium glutamicum could produce quantities of ingestible amino acids basically out of air, water, and sunlight.

R. palustris is phototrophic and fixes nitrogen, while C. glutamicum is used industrially to produce amino acids.  Does anyone have insights on how to do this or why it might not work?

[Cathal Garvey]

Hi Francesco!
That's a really fascinating thought, I like its simplicity. So, without
knowing much about those two species, here are some thoughts. You likely
know more and can tick off which of these don't matter, and which do:

* Your photosynthetic organism fixes Nitrogen, but how does it do this
in the presence of oxygen (usually these are mutually distinct)? Some
achieve this by differentiating into oxygen-poor N-fixing cells, others
may create a surface/subsurface mat that shuttles nutrients up and down,
etcetera. The way they manage this may influence how you cultivate them,
and whether they are compatible with their co-culture partner.
* Your amino-producing cells may require agitation/oxygenation that may
interrupt the above N-fixing/Photosynthetic system?
* Either species may produce antibiotics that harm the other, so
engineering a coculture would require hacking those systems out. This is
unlikely to be well studied, so you might need to experiment to discover
whether it's the case; add supernatant from one species to another to
induce any antibiotics that might emerge, then use supernatant from the
latter to test for exclusion zones on solid plates of the first. Then
reverse roles and repeat.

Lots of dimensions to play with here, but there's so much room to play
with in the area of "turning sunlight into useful molecules", whether
for food or merely to fix complex carbon:nitrogen rings as feedstock.
Co-cultures are largely unexplored here, but they have an advantage that
they can adapt more fluidly (but also unexpectedly!) to varying
conditions; that can be a boon.

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[Mega [Andreas Stuermer]]

Google CyanoBacillus or protoplast fusion.
Basically you give bacterium1 a kanamycin resistance, bacterium2 a strepR, and fuse the cells. Keep the resulting cells on both antibiotics and you may get a chimera. It may not be stable, maybe if you breed it a while it gets adapted?

[Mega [Andreas Stuermer]]

Is nitrogen rate-limiting? I'd say no, rather it is the rubisco enzyme slowness under oxygen conditions

You may be fine with eating only a photosynthetic organism which uses nitrogen from soil...