Metabolic engineering for improved heterologous pinene production in the chloroplast of Phaeodactylum tricornutum

In this study, we performed metabolic engineering in the chloroplast of P. tricornutum by expressing heterologous IDI and GPPS together with a pinene synthase. We showed that this approach considerably boosted pinene production, especially in strains where the genes were randomly integrated in the genome. Moreover, we further increased pinene titers by modulating the light intensity during cultivation. Overall, we demonstrated the potential of combining metabolic engineering with optimized cultivation parameters, specifically light intensity, to enhance the production of monoterpenoids in the chloroplast of P. tricornutum.