![This is the official logo of our project Suga[Re]volution](https://static.igem.org/mediawiki/2018/3/30/T--Sorbonne_U_Paris--sugarevolution.png )
Sugar is the main source of energy for the cell factories used in synthetic biology. However, its massive production has dramatic impacts on the environment. Therefore, in order to bring a solution to this serious environmental issue, we want to engineer a green microalgae, Chlamydomonas reinhardtti, to allow an ecofriendly sugar production within marine waters, limiting the competition with arable lands.
Moreover, to be able to spread the use of microalgae as a chassis, more genetic tools to engineer it are still required. To do so, we will enrich the recently developed Modular Cloning (MoClo) toolkit for C. reinhardtti with a synthetic retrotransposon to generate in vivo continuous directed evolution. It will be the first time that such genetic tool is applied to non-baring plasmid cells such as microalgae. This approach enables the generation of new proteins with tailor-made functional properties as well as the optimization of biological systems.
