Photosynthetically produced sucrose by immobilized Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803 drives biotransformation in E. coli.

-alginate beads is an effective method to prolong sucrose production by the engineered cyanobacteria, while allowing efficient separation of the cells from the medium. This advantage opens up novel possibilities to create advanced autotroph-heterotroph coupled cultivation systems for solar-driven production of chemicals via biotransformation, as demonstrated in this work by utilizing the photosynthetically produced sucrose to drive the conversion of cyclohexanone to ε-caprolactone by engineered E. coli.