Isolation and Characterization of New Temperature Tolerant Microalgal Strains for Biomass Production

Microalgae exhibit great potential for biomass production. Although microalgae display an enormous biodiversity, surprisingly only 15 species are used for large scale production processes worldwide. The implementation of new production strains with good process-oriented properties, especially fast g...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Energies (Basel) 2014, Vol.7 (12), p.7847-7856
Main Authors: Bleeke, Franziska, Rwehumbiza, Vincent M, Winckelmann, Dominik, Klock, Gerd
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Algae
Anniversaries
Biodiversity
Biomass
biomass production
Costs
freshwater microalgae
Freshwaters
Greenhouses
Heat resistance
high temperature tolerance
Investigations
Pigments
screening
Sequencing
Strain
Temperature
Thermal resistance
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Summary:Microalgae exhibit great potential for biomass production. Although microalgae display an enormous biodiversity, surprisingly only 15 species are used for large scale production processes worldwide. The implementation of new production strains with good process-oriented properties, especially fast growth rate and heat resistance, could improve production efficiency and reduce costs. In this study 130 environmental samples collected in Germany, Spain, Italy and Portugal were investigated for fast growing thermotolerant photosynthetic species. Isolates were characterized and identified on a molecular level. In total 21 of the isolated freshwater strains were able to grow at 40 °C. Additionally, 13 of those 21 strains are able to grow at 45 °C. The highest growth rate at room temperature was 1.16 per day (isolate T306A), compared to 0.053 per day at 45 °C (isolate Sp13). In three thermotolerant strains pigment production was induced. Molecular identification by 18S rDNA sequencing revealed that the isolates were all chlorophytes belonging to four different families.
ISSN:1996-1073
1996-1073
DOI:10.3390/en7127847