Team:NYMU-Taipei/Overview
Industrial development and population boom have led to a surge in the global demand for energy and natural resources in recent years. Ever since human realized that oil depletion is inevitable, scientists have been seeking for alternative sources of energy that can rescue natural resource from the brink of collapse. The concept of biofuel has been carried out to reduce the dependence on crude oil and greenhouse gas emission. Though innovative and fascinating, biofuel made from food crops are constantly criticized for its high production cost as well as the creation of industrial pollution and crop shortage.
After much deliberation, we consider microalgae to be promising for breaking the impasse. Microalgae hold a massive potential as an extraneous gene expression system due to its high proliferation rate, diversity of post-transcriptional modification and myriad of lifestyles. Combined with microalgae’s essence of high lipid content, we intended to transform foreign genes into microalgae to produce assistant pigment of photosynthesis, which may boost oil accumulation in the cell. A myriad of pigment sequences from other species was extracted and transformed into microalgae to compare wavelength absorbance and photosynthetic efficiency between color combination. Aside from common pigment, we also managed to transform high-value carotenoid pigments such as Astaxanthin, which is recognized as being one of the most powerful antioxidants in nature, into microalgae in pursuit of commercial benefit and investment from entrepreneurs.
Apart from genetic manipulation, we have also considered about environmental impacts associated with the resource-limited condition on the growth and content of microalgae. Various stress factors, especially nutrient-starvation conditions, induce an increased formation of lipid bodies in these cells. In fact, the principle of nitrogen starvation in microalgae has been well-investigated for a couple of years. The reason why it is not widely applicable to the industry is that the high cost of maintaining a nitrogen-free condition. To tackle the problem, we came up with a groundbreaking solution using NrtA protein, which is a high-affinity protein associated with nitrogen transportation on the plasma membrane of microalgae. We transformed the NrtA sequence into E. coli for mass production of the protein and removed nitrogen source in the medium of microalgae with a semi-permeable system combined with the high affinity protein.
In our project, we not only aim to improve an alternative energy to combat energy crisis, but we also created a well-designed platform of microalgae transformation with comprehensive data and protocols. We believe that facing the threats of the energy crisis, the breakthrough of our project will ultimately make great contributions to the future developments of biofuel.
