A Chloroplast-Localised Fluorescent Protein Enhances the Photosynthetic Action Spectrum in Green Algae.

Green microalgae are important sources of natural products and are attractive cell factories for manufacturing high-value products such as recombinant proteins. Increasing scales of production must address the bottleneck of providing sufficient light energy for photosynthesis. Enhancing the photosynthetic action spectrum of green algae to improve the utilisation of yellow light would provide additional light energy for photosynthesis.

Neurobehavioral Alterations in Zebrafish Due to Long-Term Exposure to Low Doses of Inorganic Arsenic.

Inorganic arsenic (As) is one of the most ubiquitous and toxic substances with widespread health effects on human populations and biodiversity. Although arsenic is a frequent surface water pollutant, there is scant evidence about neurotoxicity in aquatic species in different stages of development. In the present study, we investigated the neurobehavioral effects of chronic exposure to environmentally relevant doses of arsenic.

A new F131V mutation in Chlamydomonas phytoene desaturase locates a cluster of norflurazon resistance mutations near the FAD-binding site in 3D protein models.

The green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii provides a tractable genetic model to study herbicide mode of action using forward genetics. The herbicide norflurazon inhibits phytoene desaturase, which is required for carotenoid synthesis. Locating amino acid substitutions in mutant phytoene desaturases conferring norflurazon resistance provides a genetic approach to map the herbicide binding site.