Acronym BIOLEAP
Category
Aquaculture
Title Biotechnological optimization of light use efficiency in algae photobioreactors Programme FP7
Instrument (FP6)
Contact Type (FP7)
Strand (Interreg)
FP7 - ERC Starting Grant
Theme (FP7)
Activity Area (FP6)
Regional Area (Interreg)
Action (COST)
IDEAS – European Research Council
Specific Programme (FP7)
Ideas
Funding source European Coordinator Tomas Morosinotto Coordinator email tomas.morosinotto@unipd.it
Coordinator institution
UNIPD - University of Padua (Italy)
Institutions involved
NA
Start year 2012 End year 2017 Funding (€) € 1,257,600 Website http://www.biologia.unipd.it/tomas.morosinotto/ Summary New renewable energy sources are greatly needed to compensate exhausting fossil fuel reserves and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Some species of algae have interesting potential as feedstock for the production of biodiesel, thanks to their ability to accumulate large amount of lipids. However, strong research efforts are needed to fulfil this potential and address many issues involving optimization of cultivation systems, biomass harvesting and algae genetic improvement. This proposal aims to address one of these issues, the optimization of algae light use efficiency. Light, in fact, provides the energy supporting algae growth and must be exploited with the highest possible efficiency to achieve sufficient productivity. In a photobioreactor algae are highly concentrated and this cause a inhomogeneous light distribution with a large fraction of the cells exposed to very low light or even in the dark. Algae are also actively mixed and they can abruptly move from dark to full illumination and vice versa. This proposal aims to assess how alternation of dark/light cycles affects algae growth and functionality of photosynthetic apparatus both in batch and continuous cultures. In collaboration with the Chemical Engineering department, experimental data will be exploited to build a model describing the photobioreactor, a fundamental tool to improve its design. The other main scope of this project is the isolation of genetically improved strains more suitable to the artificial environment of a photobioreactor. The first part of the work of setting up protocols for transformation will be followed by a second phase for generation and selection of mutants with altered photosynthetic performances. Transcriptome analyses in different light conditions will also be instrumental for identifying the genes to be targeted by genetic engineering.
(1) Understand the limiting step in algae light use efficiency; (2) Improve light use efficiency by merging optimization of growing conditions and genetic engineering of algae. Both objectives are pursued with the aim of improving algae biofuels competitivity.
Keywords
Biofuel;
Engineering;
Technology;
Genetic;
Algae;
Marine Region
76
Not associated to marine areas
0
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