According to EurekAlert!, a science news sharing platform of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, researchers at the Tokyo Institute of Technology have discovered new targets for increasing biofuel production from the red algae glycerol-3-phosphate acyltransferase (GPAT) family.
Algae can still store a large amount of oil called triacylglycerol (TAG) under the unfavorable conditions of deprivation of nitrogen. The mechanism to accurately understand them is very important for the development of biotechnology, because TAG can be converted into biodiesel. To this end, scientists use single-celled red algae as model organisms to explore how to improve TAG production.
A study led by Higashi Imura of the Institute of Chemistry and Life Sciences at the Institute of Innovation, Tokyo Institute of Technology shows that an enzyme called GPAT1 plays a crucial role in the accumulation of TAG in red algae, with control strains. In contrast, the yield of TAG of red algae strain overexpressing GPAT1 was increased by more than 56 times, and there was no negative effect on algae growth.
The findings, published in the Science Report, together with previous studies on GPAT2, show that GPAT is closely related to TAG accumulation in red algae. The team plans to continue exploring 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 regulators are recognized and their function is altered, the productivity of TAG will be further enhanced because transcription factors affect the expression of multiple genes including GPAT1-related genes. Commercialization of biofuel production that can be successfully applied to red algae.
