Dr. LI Yantao (Assistant Professor) from University of Maryland paid a visit to Institute of Hydrobiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (IHB) on Jan. 27.

 

Dr. LI Yantao (Assistant Professor) from University of Maryland paid a visit to Institute of Hydrobiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (IHB) on Jan. 27. During his visit, he gave an oral presentation entitled “Triacylglycerol synthesis and storage in the plastid of microalgae”. 

Algae-based biofuel and high value-added products are focuses and difficult issues in the research of phycology at present. The lipid production of microalgea is a complex metabolic process controlled by multi-genes. Dr. Li studied the enzymatic process of phospholipids and lipid body synthesis. He discovered that phospholipid: diacylglycerol acyltransferase（PDAT）is critical for phospholipids synthesis in N-rich condition but less critical in N-deplete condition and diacylglycerol acyltransferases（DGAT）have different substrate preference. Since starch body is produced along with lipid accumulation in N-deplete condition, Dr. Li disrupted the starch synthesis pathway by genetic operation and improved oleaginousness in microalgea. Besides, Dr. Li also introduced that improvement of photoinduction condition after high-density fermentation can promote production of haematococcus and astaxanthin.