Nature Communications (Mar 2024)

Solar-driven sugar production directly from CO2 via a customizable electrocatalytic–biocatalytic flow system

  • Guangyu Liu,
  • Yuan Zhong,
  • Zehua Liu,
  • Gang Wang,
  • Feng Gao,
  • Chao Zhang,
  • Yujie Wang,
  • Hongwei Zhang,
  • Jun Ma,
  • Yangguang Hu,
  • Aobo Chen,
  • Jiangyuan Pan,
  • Yuanzeng Min,
  • Zhiyong Tang,
  • Chao Gao,
  • Yujie Xiong

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-46954-w
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 15, no. 1
pp. 1 – 11

Abstract

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Abstract Conventional food production is restricted by energy conversion efficiency of natural photosynthesis and demand for natural resources. Solar-driven artificial food synthesis from CO2 provides an intriguing approach to overcome the limitations of natural photosynthesis while promoting carbon-neutral economy, however, it remains very challenging. Here, we report the design of a hybrid electrocatalytic−biocatalytic flow system, coupling photovoltaics-powered electrocatalysis (CO2 to formate) with five-enzyme cascade platform (formate to sugar) engineered via genetic mutation and bioinformatics, which achieves conversion of CO2 to C6 sugar (L-sorbose) with a solar-to-food energy conversion efficiency of 3.5%, outperforming natural photosynthesis by over three-fold. This flow system can in principle be programmed by coupling with diverse enzymes toward production of multifarious food from CO2. This work opens a promising avenue for artificial food synthesis from CO2 under confined environments.