Rhodomonas cultivation under different light wavelength
Microalgae are considered as a very promising alternative for many applications in industry such as cosmetics, food, feed and biofuel production. The main advantage of microalgae is their high productivity compared to conventional crops and their ability to sustainably produce proteins, carotenoids, fatty acids and carbohydrates and they can be cultivated at non-arable land.
Photons can be absorbed as energy source. Both light intensity and quality (colour or wavelength) influence the light use efficiency. In microalgae low irradiance may limit photosynthesis, but high irradiance may cause photoinhibition. Hence, irradiance can influence the production and composition in microalgae. As a result it may be possible to optimize growth and desirable biochemical quality by manipulating light intensity and quality.
In many of the photosynthetic organisms the saturation level is at 25% of the full solar light intensity and the remaining light is wasted as heat and fluorescence. In the sea, the first layers of green algae consume all light energy that chlorophyll needs and the rest of the light, that penetrates deeper, is absorbed by phycobiliproteins or other algae species. Phycobiliproteins are photosynthetic light harvesting pigments found in cyanobacteria, red algae and cryptomonads and are able to harvest electromagnetic radiation in a spectral region where light absorption of chlorophyll is inefficient (450-750nm).
Rhodomonas is a cryptophyte species, which exploits phycoerythrin 545 (PE545) as the primary light-harvesting antenna. In this project Rhodomonas will be cultivated under different light wavelength and intensities in order to investigate the changes in phycoerythrin composition.