Líffræðifélag Íslands - biologia.is
Líffræðiráðstefnan 2017
Erindi/veggspjald / Talk/poster V25
Höfundar / Authors: Yixi Su(1), Zhiqian Yi(1), Snædis Bjornsdottir(3), Sigurdur Brynjolfsson(1), Weiqi Fu(1,2)
Starfsvettvangur / Affiliations: 1. Center for Systems Biology and Faculty of Industrial Engineering, Mechanical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Iceland, Reykjavik, Iceland, 2. Division of Science and Math, New York University Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi, UAE, 3. Faculty of Life And Environmental Sciences, University of Iceland, Reykjavik, Iceland
Kynnir / Presenter: Yixi Su
Exploitation of microalgae as sources of lipids, carotenoids, single-cell proteins and biofuels has long been proposed, but high cost of production is the major obstacle for their wide applications. Currently, microalgae are only commercialized for high value compounds such as omega-3 fatty acids and pigments. Nevertheless, microalgae-derived products are still not cost competitive to other alternate substitutes such as chemical synthesis or natural compounds from other organisms (Borowitzka, 2013). The present project focusing on strain breeding aims at improving economics of the microalgae production process via increasing productivity. Forward and reverse genetics strategies are taken into consideration to accomplish our goal.
In our previous studies, random mutagenesis was conducted to improve carotenoids accumulation in diatoms. At present, lipid-targeting fluorescent dyes such Nile red and BODIPY 505/515 facilitate efficient selection of lipid-overproducing strains by flow cytometry-based screening technology (YEN DOAN & Obbard, 2011). However, because the autofluorescent signal by carotenoids is low and no dye is available for carotenoids, fluorescence-based assay has not been established for detecting carotenoids overproducers. To develop an efficient screening method for carotenoids detection, we have revealed correlations between the carotenoids content and other detectable indicators such as fluorescence of chlorophyll a and stained lipids, which enables preliminary microplate screening based on fluorescence detection. ). With preliminary screening based on chlorophyll a fluoresence, four stable mutants of P. tricornutum were obtained through mutagenesis exhibiting significantly higher fucoxanthin content (53.2 ~ 69.3% higher than the wild type).