Much of the world struggles with inadequate access to essential medicines and nutrition due to high pharmaceutical prices and unreliable distribution. Our solution is to decentralize production of these resources by engineering the robust cyanobacterium, Arthrospira platensis, to produce essential medicines and supplements self-sustainably, photosynthetically, and on-site at healthcare facilities.

However, due to insufficient research into the genetics of A. platensis, we have undertaken two separate engineering endeavors in the metabolically similar Synechococcus elongatus PCC 7942 to produce acetaminophen and human-usable vitamin B12. The genes for acetaminophen production, 4ABH and nhoA, and those for B12 production, ssuE and bluB, have been transformed into PCC 7942 with the aim of method validation and subsequent migration to A. platensis, once a genetic system has been established. In addition, we are performing a whole genome sequencing of A. platensis UTEX 2340 to further this research and its potential medical applications.