Production of a viral surface protein in Nannochloropsis oceanica for fish vaccination against infectious pancreatic necrosis virus.

Nannochloropsis oceanica is a unicellular oleaginous microalga of emerging biotechnological interest with a sequenced, annotated genome, available transcriptomic and proteomic data, and well-established basic molecular tools for genetic engineering. To establish N. oceanica as a eukaryotic host for recombinant protein synthesis and develop molecular technology for vaccine production, we chose the viral surface protein 2 (VP2) of a pathogenic fish virus that causes infectious pancreatic necrosis as a model vaccine.

The essential role of fungal peroxisomes in plant infection.

Several filamentous fungi are ecologically and economically important plant pathogens that infect a broad variety of crops. They cause high annual yield losses and contaminate seeds and fruits with mycotoxins. Not only powerful infection structures and detrimental toxins, but also cell organelles, such as peroxisomes, play important roles in plant infection.

Stramenopile microalgae as "green biofactories" for recombinant protein production.

Photoautotrophic microalgae have become intriguing hosts for recombinant protein production because they offer important advantages of both prokaryotic and eukaryotic expression systems. Advanced molecular tools have recently been established for the biotechnologically relevant group of stramenopile microalgae, particularly for several Nannochloropsis species and diatoms. Strategies for the selection of powerful genetic elements and for optimization of protein production have been reported.

Evolutionary Maintenance of the PTS2 Protein Import Pathway in the Stramenopile Alga .

The stramenopile alga evolved by secondary endosymbiosis of a red alga by a heterotrophic host cell and emerged as a promising organism for biotechnological applications, such as the production of polyunsaturated fatty acids and biodiesel. Peroxisomes play major roles in fatty acid metabolism but experimental analyses of peroxisome biogenesis and metabolism in are not reported yet. In fungi, animals, and land plants, soluble proteins of peroxisomes are targeted to the matrix by one of two peroxisome targeting signals (type 1, PTS1, or type 2, PTS2), which are generally conserved across kingdoms and allow the prediction of peroxisomal matrix proteins from nuclear genome sequences.