Project proposals > Project details
Transport Engineering in Microalgae
Main area: | Plant biochemistry |
Target group: | Biology-Biotechnology, Natural Resources, Environmental Science |
Educational level: | Master |
Project description: Recombinant proteins are an integrated part of our daily lives – they are in the laundry powder, hair dyes, our food and medicine. In recent years much research has gone into using microalgae as expression hosts. Chlamydomonas reinhardtii is an eukaryotic microalga that has been shown to produce e.g. monoclonal antibodies that are useful in cancer treatment. This kind of protein cannot be produced by conventional hosts (e.g. E. coli). Unfortunately production in microalgae is rarely cost efficient. One reason for this is cultivation issues. Compared to bacterial or fungal hosts, C. reinhardtii grows only to relatively low densities in bioreactors. This is because it relies on sun light for photosynthesis and cannot grow on organic carbon sources such as sugar. As the density in a culture increases the light cannot reach the center and the algae will lack energy to grow. By supplying a reduced carbon source (acetate) this problem can be alleviated, but acetate affects the pH and thus must be continuously titrated into the culture. Your project This project aims at making the green algae C. reinhardtii a more attractive production host in the biotech industry. The objective is to enable C. reinhardtii to grow on common sugars such as glucose and sucrose. The reason C. reinhardtii cannot grow on sugars is primarily due to its lack of sugar importers in the plasma membrane. You will engineer selected sugar transporters from both other algae species and Arabidopsis thaliana into C. reinhardtii and investigate changes in uptake of and growth on common sugars.
Learning outcome At the end of this project you will be able to:
The project provides a solid foundation for future work in both research labs and biotech industry, gives a solid foundation in basic skills used in molecular biology and an understanding of necessary bioinformatics tools. Who we are; Transport group of Hussam H. Nour-Eldin in the National Research Centre of Excellence, DynaMo (https://dynamo.ku.dk/). We provide a stimulating, international research environment where you have an execellent opportunity to advance your skills. Our research lab has a strong international research profile with a record of high impact publications | |
Keywords: | Clamydomonas reinhardtii, Microalgae biotechnology, Plant biology-biotechnology, Transporter biology, Synthetic biology |
Project home page: | https://dynamo.ku.dk/ |
Supervisor(s): | Hussam Hassan Nour-Eldin |
Email: | huha@plen.ku.dk |