Grant: Collaborative Research and Development Grants

Algae-C is a company specialized in algal biomass production. It enables on-site production of algae for a widevariety of sectors (aquaculture, nutraceutical, cosmetic and biofuel). To date, many fuels, pharmaceuticals andcosmetic products are extracted from plants. These valuable plant natural products (PNPs) are often producedin low quantities in plants and extraction methods can be long and expensive. Thus, there is much interest inmetabolic engineering for developing microbial platforms to produce specific PNPs. Microalgae arewell-known systems for plant biology and genetic engineering and are interesting and suitable hosts for thereconstitution of complex plant pathways. Algae-C wishes to translate metabolic engineering research intoindustrial processes. This project aims to optimized microalgae platforms for the production of valuable PNPs.These ventures are motivated by consumer demand for products that are environmentally friendly, lessexpensive, and possess properties similar or superior with those generated by PNPs.