Small cells with big photosynthetic productivities: biotechnological potential of the Picochlorum genus.

The Picochlorum genus is a distinctive eukaryotic green-algal clade that is the focus of several current biotechnological studies. It is capable of extremely rapid growth rates and has exceptional tolerances to high salinity, intense light, and elevated temperatures. Importantly, it has robust stability and high-biomass productivities in outdoor field trials in seawater.

Cyanobacteria newly isolated from marine volcanic seeps display rapid sinking and robust, high-density growth.

Unlabelled: Cyanobacteria are photosynthetic organisms that play important roles in carbon cycling and are promising bioproduction chassis. Here, we isolate two novel cyanobacteria with 4.6Mbp genomes, UTEX 3221 and UTEX 3222, from a unique marine environment with naturally elevated CO₂.

Proximate biomass characterization of the high productivity marine microalga Picochlorum celeri TG2.

Microalgae are compelling renewable resources with applications including biofuels, bioplastics, nutrient supplements, and cosmetic products. Picochlorum celeri is an alga with high industrial interest due to exemplary outdoor areal biomass productivities in seawater. Detailed proximate analysis is needed in multiple environmental conditions to understand the dynamic biomass compositions of P.

Heterologous expression of formate dehydrogenase enables photoformatotrophy in the emerging model microalga, .

Rising global greenhouse gas emissions and the impacts of resultant climate change necessitate development and deployment of carbon capture and conversion technologies. Amongst the myriad of bio-based conversion approaches under evaluation, a formate bio-economy has recently been proposed, wherein CO-derived formate serves as a substrate for concurrent carbon and energy delivery to microbial systems. To date, this approach has been explored in chemolithotrophic and heterotrophic organisms via native or engineered formatotrophy.

Improved Combinatorial Assembly and Barcode Sequencing for Gene-Sized DNA Constructs.

Synergistic and supportive interactions among genes can be incorporated in engineering biology to enhance and stabilize the performance of biological systems, but combinatorial numerical explosion challenges the analysis of multigene interactions. The incorporation of DNA barcodes to mark genes coupled with next-generation sequencing offers a solution to this challenge. We describe improvements for a key method in this space, CombiGEM, to broaden its application to assembling typical gene-sized DNA fragments and to reduce the cost of sequencing for prevalent small-scale projects.

Biotechnology for secure biocontainment designs in an emerging bioeconomy.

Genetically modified organisms (GMOs) have emerged as an integral component of a sustainable bioeconomy, with an array of applications in agriculture, bioenergy, and biomedicine. However, the rapid development of GMOs and associated synthetic biology approaches raises a number of biosecurity concerns related to environmental escape of GMOs, detection thereof, and impact upon native ecosystems. A myriad of genetic safeguards have been deployed in diverse microbial hosts, ranging from classical auxotrophies to global genome recoding.

A multi-omic characterization of temperature stress in a halotolerant Scenedesmus strain for algal biotechnology.

Microalgae efficiently convert sunlight into lipids and carbohydrates, offering bio-based alternatives for energy and chemical production. Improving algal productivity and robustness against abiotic stress requires a systems level characterization enabled by functional genomics. Here, we characterize a halotolerant microalga Scenedesmus sp.

Development of a high-productivity, halophilic, thermotolerant microalga .

Microalgae are promising biocatalysts for applications in sustainable fuel, food, and chemical production. Here, we describe culture collection screening, down-selection, and development of a high-productivity, halophilic, thermotolerant microalga, . This microalga displays a rapid growth rate and high diel biomass productivity (34 g m day), with a composition well-suited for downstream processing.

Down-Selection and Outdoor Evaluation of Novel, Halotolerant Algal Strains for Winter Cultivation.

Algae offer promising feedstocks for the production of renewable fuel and chemical intermediates. However, poor outdoor winter cultivation capacity currently limits deployment potential. In this study, 300 distinct algal strains were screened in saline medium to determine their cultivation suitability during winter conditions in Mesa, Arizona.