Grant: Canada Research Chairs

Sustainability is a three-fold task, addressing the legacy of first-generation production systems, improving current processes, and developing processes for the future. While green energy is the focus of significant research effort because of the emissions produced by combustion of fossil fuels, thousands of everyday products are made from other petrochemical products. Preparing for the future involves addressing the long-term need for sustainable processes for the production of specialty and feedstock chemicals. Biological processes are inherently more sustainable because they are typically conducted at mild temperatures and usually produce biodegradable waste. Microalgae are considered the pinnacle of sustainable processing because microalgae use light to drive their biological processes. As single celled organisms, they can also be grown faster than land plants in a more reproducible manner. They are particularly promising hosts for the production of isoprenoids. Isoprenoids are a large class of molecules containing many industrially relevant compounds like artemisinin (an anti-malarial drug) or astaxanthin, a potent antioxidant. Many isoprenoids of interest and produced in plants and are still challenging to produce as pure compounds in yeast or bacterial systems. With greater similarities between plants and microalgae, they might be better hosts for isoprenoid production as many produce their own isoprenoids in significant quantities. However, metabolic engineering of microalgae is underdeveloped because these species are extremely challenging to genetically engineer. The overall goal of the proposed research is to establish light-driven bioprocesses for the production of isoprenoids and proteins using microalgae as green cell-factories. This work will also establish the key processing factors that affect productivity, titre, and yield in microalgae biomanufacturing which is critical to creating the sustainable manufacturing practices of the future. This will be done by using the Agrobacterium mediate transformation system to engineer the genome of Chlorella vulgaris to produce a number of model proteins including several therapeutics and enzymes from the biosynthesis pathway of artemisinin, a malaria treatment. The productivity of these strains will be assessed under different growth conditions to determine the interactions between growth and productivity. This work will help establish environmentally neutral biomanufacturing processes.