The use of narrow-band LED light in photobioreactors and comparative metabolomics to aid the development of marine microalgae for biotechnology

Although algae have been developed in the context of biofuels, the potential of marine microalgae as a source of bioactive specialized metabolites has yet to be investigated systematically. Two barriers exist to their efficient exploitation: (1) reliable tuning of their physiology during cultivation to induce metabolite production and (2) recognizing and characterizing metabolites produced.

Highly-controllable, narrow-waveband light will be employed through the use of modern LEDs Photobioreactors (PBRs) to induce chemically-diverse metabolite production by microalgal strains. The algal metabolites will be extracted profiled and further investigated using tandem mass spectrometry (HR-MS/MS). Both of these measurements are metrological, providing the measurement of tens of thousands of molecules across hundreds of crude fermentation extracts. The HR-MS/MS data will be used to create molecular networks using Global Natural Products Social Molecular Networking. This will allow comparison of complex microalgal crude extracts based on similarities and differences of metabolite fragmentation across multiple strains (up to hundreds). This cutting-edge approach to chemical dereplication of strains allows identification of known metabolites in addition to analogues of known chemicals and thus rapidly identifies areas of unique chemistry for isolation and chemical prioritization (e.g. a particular strain).

Although these recently developed methods have been applied to bacteria, this will be the first study to use these innovative metabolomics approaches to enable the unprecedented biological diversity of microalgae to be investigated. Investigating light conditions (light/dark; flashing; intensity); wavelengths (mono and mixed) coupled with control of other environmental conditions (pH; temperature) will significantly advance microalgae as a biotechnological resource for the discovery of bioactive molecules that may find utility in industry and medicine.

Techniques to be used:
Microbiology, molecular biology, Liquid Chromatography High Resolution Mass Spectrometry (LC-HRMS), molecular networking, metabolomics.