Patent ID: 8735651

Claim:
A method for photobiological production of butanol comprising: introducing a transgenic photosynthetic organism into a photobiological reactor system, the transgenic photosynthetic organism comprising transgenes coding for a set of enzymes that convert a certain intermediate product of the Calvin cycle selected from the group consisting of glyceraldehyde 3-phosphate, 3-phosphoglycerate, fructose-1,6-diphosphate, and fructose-6-phosphate, into butanol; using reducing power and energy associated with the transgenic photosynthetic organism acquired from photosynthetic water splitting and proton gradient coupled electron transport process in the photobiological reactor to synthesize butanol; and using a butanol separation process to harvest the synthesized butanol from the photobiological reactor; wherein the transgenic photosynthetic organism is further transformed with additional genes that encode and inducibly express an additional set of enzymes selected from the group consisting of amylase, starch phosphorylase, hexokinase, phosphoglucomutase, glucosephosphate isomerase, and phosphofructose kinase that facilitate starch degradation and glycolysis in the stroma region of the chloroplast.