The climate, environment and industrial infrastructure of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) make it an ideal location for marine photosynthetic microbial cell factory (PMCF) technologies.

The climate, environment and industrial infrastructure of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) make it an ideal location for marine photosynthetic microbial cell factory (PMCF) technologies. However, to access this potential we must first develop PCMF strains capable of thriving in the harsh KSA climate. Generally, photosynthetic microbes are limited by their tolerance of light, temperature and salinity. Taken together, photosynthetic microbes from the Red Sea offer a very promising source for potential PMCF strains from which robust, highly efficient photosynthetic microbes adapted to the relevant conditions (salinity, temperature, insolation) can be developed. Here, we describe an isolation-characterization and genomic modelling pipeline targeting highly robust marine photosynthetic microbes from which PMCFs are developed by directed evolution approaches. To date we have generated over 1200 primary isolates from which a group of 120 lead strains were developed. From the latter, 44 optimized lead strains have been produced. Selected strains have been licensed for industrial applications in KSA.