Compartment II: The photoheterotrophic compartment

This compartment is responsible for the elimination of the terminal products of the liquefying compartment. In the original MELiSSA concept, it is divided into two separate and independent compartments (i.e. a photoautotrophic and an photoheterotrophic compartment). This separation was mainly due to an expectation of high H₂ production from the first compartment. Although the specific treatment of hydrogen is still being kept in mind, the very wide results for substrate degradation obtained with R. rubrum lead to simplification of the loop to only one second compartment (that is, a photoheterotrophic one). Regarding the past researches on this compartment, they are driven by two major factors:

• the demonstration of the validity of the preliminarily established metabolism in the presence of one or several carbon sources
• the improvement of the light transfer model