From the Genomic Blueprint to Application: Cyanobacteria in Fundamental Research, Biotechnology and Synthetic Biology
at
Institute of Hydrobiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences
September 25-29 2019, Wuhan, China

      Among all groups of prokaryotes, few have played a bigger role than cyanobacteria on the global scale. The appearance of cyanobacteria, at least 2.8 billion years ago, brought a radical transition of the Earth's environment as the oxygen they produced from their photosynthetic activity turned the anoxic world into an oxic one. According to one proposed scenario, the accumulation of oxygen due to oxygenic photosynthesis may have triggered a planetary-scale glaciation, known as the snowball Earth, at the early paleoproterozoic period (2.3-2.2 Ga) because of the oxidation of the greenhouse gas methane. The increase in the atmospheric level of oxygen also marked a major transition in the evolutionary history of life, as many organisms which had evolved under anoxic environment, were forced to retreat into anoxic environments, to further evolve to adapt to the new one by adopting oxygen-driven metabolic networks, or to become extinct. Therefore, cyanobacteria constitute a key to our understanding on the early history of biological and environmental evolution, the bioenergitic and metabolic processes and their evolution. Such studies are also relevant because of the increasing concern on the global climate changes. 
      Cyanobacteria adopt a quite simple life style, using water as a source of reducing power, light as energy, and CO₂ as carbon source. This simple life style contrasts with their extraordinary success on the Earth. Their success can be attributed to multiple factors; their diversity and flexibility in bioenergetic and metabolic processes must have contributed to their successful colonization of various habitats. Sometimes, they are so successful that they pose real problems to environmental safety, and human and animal health because of the bloom formation and the toxins produced by some cyanobacteria. Many cyanobacteria can also fix N₂, a process that is normally incompatible with oxygenic photosynthesis because of the high sensitivity of the nitrogenase complex to oxygen. To make it possible, these cyanobacteria either separate nitrogen fixation and photosynthesis according to oscillation of the circadian rhythm, or by sequestrating the nitrogenase complex into a particular cell type, a heterocyst. 
      Thus, the characteristics of cyanobacteria make them interesting models for the studies covering diverse disciplines such as genomics and evolution, biophysics, biochemical complexes and energy processes, cell biology, environmental biology, geology, etc. Consequently, the techniques and approaches used by cyanobacteriologists to address different scientific problems have also been diverse, often at the interface of biology, chemistry, physics and informatics. The proposal of this symposium reflects these diversities, offering a rich source for scientific exchanges. 
      The past years have witnessed an enormous increase in our knowledge on fundamentals of photosynthetic metabolism and regulatory networks as a basis for synthetic biology, opening the door for application of cyanobacteria as green cell factories for sustainable production of clean energy and feedstock.
The aim of this symposium is to bring researchers from China and Germany to have close communication on a specific topic, reflecting the development of the field and highlighting emerging themes. Some researchers from third countries are also invited to attend. The meeting is intended as a synopsis of the state of the art in basic research on bioenergetics, metabolism, regulation and biodiversity of cyanobacteria, as well as the newest developments cyanobacterial biotechnology and synthetic biology.

ORGANIZING COMMITTEE 
     Organizers 
     Institute of Hydrobiology, CAS 
     Qingdao Institute of Bioenergy and Bioprocess Technology, CAS 

     Executive Organizers
     Key Laboratory of Algal Biology, CAS
     Key Laboratory of Biofuels, CAS
     Shandong Provincial Key Laboratory of Synthetic Biology