08.09.19 – Ardemis Boghossian will be presenting the talk “A nanobioengineering approach to developing living photovoltaics” at the E-conversion Conference taking place in Venice on the 22nd of September.

Despite their inspiration in improving synthetic photovoltaics, photosynthetic systems suffer from stabilities and efficiencies that limit their direct use in photovoltaics. While they benefit from autonomous repair and reproduction, photosynthetic systems contain light-harvesting machinery that is optimized for evolutionary purposes rather than photocurrent production. Herein we present bioengineered cyanobacteria capable of enhanced photocurrent production. We introduce genetically encoded exoelectronic pathways that serve as electron conduits for interfacing photosynthetic cells with nanomaterial scaffolds. These conduits further enable researchers to electronically rewire the cell metabolism and repro-gram biological cells to perform as artificialelectronic devices. The ability to improve photovoltaic performance through both nanomaterials engineering and synthetic biology unlocks new possibilities in achieving a viable technology.