The evolutionary origin of the photosynthetic eukaryotes drastically altered the evolution of complex lifeforms and impacted global ecology. This study reports the design and construction of artificial endosymbionts by fusing photosynthetic cyanobacteria and budding yeasts. By replicating the evolutionary origin of photosynthetic eukaryotes as proposed in the long-standing endosymbiotic theory, this novel approach paved a way toward understanding of remarkable evolutionary transformation of chloroplasts. In this work, the yeasts and cyanobacteria mutants are mutual benefically fused as chimera, where the cyanobacterial endosymbionts perform bioenergetic functions to support the growth of yeast cells photosynthetically while the S. cerevisiae hosts provide essential metabolites to the fused S. elongatus endosymbionts. This endosymbiotic platforms represent technology innovation with promising application in synthetic biology, such as production of economic molecules from autotrophic chassis strains.

Source: 
Cournoyer, J.E., Altman, S.D., Gao, Yl. et al. Engineering artificial photosynthetic life-forms through endosymbiosis. Nat Commun 13, 2254 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-29961-7