Engineering marine cyanobacteria for sustainable ammonia production

About the project

Nitrogen fertilizers are essential for global food production, but their production and use represent major environmental and sustainability challenges. Most synthetic nitrogen fertilizer is produced through the Haber–Bosch process, which requires large amounts of energy and currently relies heavily on fossil fuels.

At the same time, a substantial fraction of the nitrogen applied to agricultural land is not taken up by crops. This excess nitrogen can be lost to the environment, contributing to greenhouse-gas emissions, eutrophication of aquatic ecosystems, water pollution, and disruption of the global nitrogen cycle. Developing more sustainable ways to produce and deliver nitrogen to crops is therefore an important challenge for future agriculture.

Our research aims to harness and engineer nitrogenase in unicellular non-nitrogen-fixing cyanobacteria, with a particular interest in strains that can be cultivated in marine environments. Our goal is to develop cyanobacterial systems capable of producing nitrogen-rich biomass and/or biologically available nitrogen compounds that can be used as bio-based fertilizers. we envision sunlight, CO₂, and N₂-driven microbial platforms for sustainable fertilizer production, providing an alternative or complement to conventional nitrogen fertilizers while helping reduce the energy use and environmental footprint associated with the global nitrogen cycle.