Biological desert crusts are relatively common in the arid deserts of the Sultanate of Oman; however, little is known about their microbial community

Cyanobacteria hold significant potential as industrial biotechnology (IB) platforms for the production of a wide variety of bio-products ranging from biofuels such as hydrogen, alcohols and isoprenoids, to high-value bioactive and recombinant proteins. Underpinning this technology, are the recent advances in cyanobacterial “omics” research, the development of improved genetic engineering tools for key species, and the emerging field of cyanobacterial synthetic biology. These approaches enabled the development of elaborate metabolic engineering programs aimed at creating designer strains tailored for different IB applications. In this review, we provide an overview of the current status of the fields of cyanobacterial omics and genetic engineering with specific focus on the current molecular tools and technologies that have been developed in the past five years. The paper concludes by giving insights on future commercial applications of cyanobacteria and highlights the challenges that need to be addressed in order to make cyanobacterial industrial biotechnology more feasible in the near future.

Using a combination of process rate determination, microsensor profiling and molecular techniques, we demonstrated that denitrification, and not anaerobic ammonium oxidation (anammox), is the major nitrogen loss process in biological soil crusts from Oman. Potential denitrification rates were 584±101 and 58±20 μmol N m−2 h−1 for cyanobacterial and lichen crust, respectively. Complete denitrification to N2 was further confirmed by an 15NO3− tracer experiment with intact crust pieces that proceeded at rates of 103±19 and 27±8 μmol N m−2 h−1 for cyanobacterial and lichen crust, respectively. Strikingly, N2O gas was emitted at very high potential rates of 387±143 and 31±6 μmol N m−2 h−1 from the cyanobacterial and lichen crust, respectively, with N2O accounting for 53–66% of the total emission of nitrogenous gases. Microsensor measurements revealed that N2O was produced in the anoxic layer and thus apparently originated from incomplete denitrification. Using quantitative PCR, denitrification genes were detected in both the crusts and were expressed either in comparable (nirS) or slightly higher (narG) numbers in the cyanobacterial crusts. Although 99% of the nirS sequences in the cyanobacterial crust were affiliated to an uncultured denitrifying bacterium, 94% of these sequences were most closely affiliated to Paracoccus denitrificans in the lichen crust. Sequences of nosZ gene formed a distinct cluster that did not branch with known denitrifying bacteria. Our results demonstrate that nitrogen loss via denitrification is a dominant process in crusts from Oman, which leads to N2O gas emission and potentially reduces desert soil fertility.