Wild-type and glgA1 knockout mutant strains of Synechococcus sp. PCC 7002 were grown in medium A+ (pH = 8.0) [24] (Additional file 1: Table S1) and were incubated at 38°C while sparging with 1% v/v CO2 in air. Wild-type C. reinhardtii and sta6 mutant strains were grown in TAP media (pH = 7.0) incubated at 30°C.