Hugh Douglas Goold, Stéphan Cuiné, Bertrand Légeret, Yuanxue Liang, Sabine Brugière, Pascaline Auroy, Hélène Javot, Marianne Tardif, Brian Jones, Fred Beisson, Gilles Peltier, Yonghua Li-Beisson
Enriching algal biomass in energy density is an important goal in algal biotechnology. Nitrogen (N) starvation is considered the most potent trigger of oil accumulation in microalgae and has been thoroughly investigated. However, N starvation causes the slow down and eventually the arrest of biomass growth. In this study, we show that exposing a Chlamydomonas reinhardtii culture to saturating light (SL) under a nonlimiting CO2 concentration in turbidostatic photobioreactors induces a sustained accumulation of lipid droplets (LDs) without compromising growth, which results in much higher oil productivity than N starvation...
August 2016: Plant Physiology