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Email us: 2017igem.nymutaipei@gmail.com Call us: 886-2-28267316 Facebook: NYMU iGEM Team
AFFILIATIONS & ACKNOWLEDGMENT
With the development of global economy in the latest demands of energy in world, Taiwanese person produce 2.58 billion tons of carbon emission a year. The carbon emission of each person in Taiwan is far ahead China, Japan and South Korea. So in our project, we want to use biofuel as an alternative to fossil fuel in our project. We choose Microalgae as biofuel because it will produce more oil during the period of nitrogen starvation.
One research indicates nitrogen starvation promotion fuel accumulation in microalgae. Under nitrogen starvation, de novo synthesis of triacylglycerol from acyl-CoA increases. Then acyl moieties from the degradation of membrane lipids recycle into triacylglycerol and finally increase carbon flux towards glycerol-3 -phosphate and acyl-CoA for fatty acid synthesis. Therefore, the oil accumulation under nitrogen starvation will increase.
How to reach nitrogen starvation? In the past, people cultivate microalgae in closed pond. Give microalgae no nitrogen mediate and extract nitrogen. But this method is consumes lots of energy like closed pond cultivation need electricity to maintain the temperature, nutrition, light etc. So, we want to develop a new method to make microalgae reach nitrogen starvation and evaluate oil production in open pond.