Enzymes found in red algae that increase biofuel production

December 27, 2023

According to EurekAlert !, a scientific news sharing platform of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), Tokyo University of Technology researchers have discovered a new target that can increase biofuel production from the red algae glycerol-3-phosphate acyltransferase (GPAT) family point.

Algae can still store a large amount of oil called triacylglycerol (TAG) under the adverse conditions of deprivation of nitrogen, and accurately understanding their mechanism is crucial to the development of biotechnology because TAG can be converted into biodiesel. To this end, scientists use single-celled red algae as a model organism to explore how to improve TAG production.

A study led by Toshimura Imasa of the Laboratory of Chemistry and Life Sciences at the Tokyo Institute of Technology ’s Innovation Institute showed that an enzyme called GPAT1 plays a crucial role in the accumulation of red algae ’s TAG, compared with the control strain In comparison, the TAG production of red algae strains that overexpress GPAT1 can be increased by more than 56 times without any negative impact on algae growth.

The research results published in the "Scientific Report", together with previous research on GPAT2, showed that GPAT is closely related to the accumulation of TAG in red algae. The team plans to continue to explore how GPAT1 and GPAT2 participate in TAG accumulation. The next step is to identify transcription factors that can control the expression of each target gene.

The researchers believe that if these regulatory factors can be identified and their functions changed, the productivity of TAG will be further improved, because transcription factors will affect the expression of multiple genes including GPAT1-related genes. The method based on the basic molecular mechanism of TAG synthesis should be successfully applied to the commercialization of red algae biofuel production. (Reporter Fang Linlin)

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