2025: SOLARIS
Billions of years ago, cyanobacteria transformed Earth’s atmosphere through carbon fixation, enabling the metabolic foundation of modern ecosystems. Yet, despite its central role, photosynthetic carbon fixation has not changed much since its origin. With SOLARIS, we reexamine this long-standing process from the perspective of synthetic biology, foundationally changing and advancing CO₂ fixation in cyanobacteria. Our solution lays the groundwork for photosynthesis 2.0 to overcome the kinetic and oxygen-sensitivity limitations of RuBisCO by introducing a distinct carbon fixation cycle supported by a carbonic anhydrase system we newly identified and confirmed for activity. This has the potential to make cyanobacteria far better at fixing CO₂ from the atmosphere and turning it into biomass. SOLARIS offers the tools and methodologies for rewriting core metabolic pathways with synthetic biology for optimizing synthetic carbon fixation cycles in vivo and in vitro, a foundational step toward programmable photosynthesis and a new generation of engineered phototrophs.
For more infos, visit our WIKI and/or watch our presentation VIDEO.
Rewards
Gold Medal
Best New Basic Part Award Nomination, Overgrad
The 2025 iGEM competition
In 2025, 437 team from 46 countries participated at the competition and more than 4600 people attended the Grand Jamboree that was held in Paris, at the Porte de Versailles Convention Center from 29th to 31st of October 2025. Full infos and results are available on the iGEM 2025 website.
