Cost-effective production of bioplastic polyhydroxybutyrate via introducing heterogeneous constitutive promoter and elevating acetyl-Coenzyme A pool of rapidly growing cyanobacteria

[Display omitted] •Constitutive promoter Pcpc560 has a high expression level even without any inducer.•The developed strain expressing phaCAB with Pcpc560 produced 226 mg L−1 of PHB.•Supplying acetate is more effective than applying stresses in producing PHB.•Addition of 1 g L−1 of acetate resulted in 607.2 mg L−1 of PHB, a 2.7-fold increase.•The cost of additive for PHB production could be reduced by more than 300 times. Bioplastic production using cyanobacteria can be an effective strategy to cope with environmental problems caused by using petroleum-based plastics. Synechococcus elongatus UTEX 2973 with heterogeneous phaCAB can produce bioplastic polyhydroxybutyrate (PHB) with a high CO2 uptake rate. For cost-effective production of PHB in S. elongatus UTEX 2973, phaCAB was expressed by the constitutive Pcpc560, resulting in the production of 226 mg/L of PHB by only photoautotrophic cultivation without the addition of inducer. Several culture conditions were applied to increase PHB productivity, and when acetate was supplied at a concentration of 1 g/L as an organic carbon source, productivity significantly increased resulting in 607.2 mg/L of PHB and additive cost reduction of more than 300 times was achieved compared to IPTG. Consequently, these results suggest the possibility of cyanobacteria as an agent that can economically produce PHB and as a solution to the problem of petroleum-based plastics.