Synthetic biology aims to create biological circuits that perform useful functions. The engineering of pathways that produce hydrogen poses an interesting opportunity to explore both electronic properties of electron transfer in cells and also improve biological hydrogen production as a source of clean energy.

Hydrogenases, enzymes that produce hydrogen, are comlpex proteins that can transfer electrons quantum-mechanically between metal clusters bound to the protein matrix. Hydrogenases are made up of smaller metal cluster containing proteins recombined through evolution. Understanding how these domains interact with each other and with other proteins will improve our ability to engineer better hydrogen production pathways.

Symbiosis plays an important role in the evolution and function of countless organisms. Can designed symbiosis be used to better understand the evolution of symbiosis? Can it improve synthetic biology circuits by combining the strengths of different organisms?