Modelling and Analysis of Biological Systems to Obtain Biofuels

This work is focused on the construction and uses of genome-scale metabolic models to efficiently obtain biofuels, such as ethanol and hydrogen. As a target organism, cyanobacterium Synechocystis sp. PCC6803 was chosen. This organism has been studied as a potential photon-fuelled production platform, for its ability to grow only from carbon dioxide, water and photons. This dissertation verses about methods to model, analyse, estimate and predict the metabolic behaviour of cells. Principal goal is to extract knowledge from the different biological aspects of an organism in order to use it for an industrial relevant objective. The work presented here unveils the capabilities of cyanobacterium Synechocystis sp. PCC6803 to evolve interesting metabolites, such as succinate, ethanol and hydrogen, as a clean production platform.