Abstract
Botryococcus braunii is one of the most promising microalgal feedstocks for biofuel production because it accumulates a large amount of hydrocarbons within the colony. Several researchers have used vitamin-free media for short-term culture experiments of B. braunii. However, vitamin requirements of B. braunii have never been explicitly described. Therefore, the consequences of long-term vitamin deficiency remain unclear. To investigate the vitamin B12 (cobalamin) requirement of B. braunii, the growth characteristics and oil productivity were compared using an axenic strain B. braunii BOT-22, one of the fast-growing strains, with and without vitamin B12 supplementation. The growth rate, maximum biomass concentration, and lipid content did not differ between cultures with and without vitamin B12 supplements. In addition, an in silico survey of the transcriptomic dataset of B. braunii BOT-22 identified a putative gene fragment coding for the vitamin B12-independent methionine synthetase (metE), which is a hallmark of the vitamin B12 autotrophy in algae. In conclusion, these data suggest that B. braunii BOT-22 is a vitamin B12 autotroph.
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Acknowledgments
We thank Natsuki Yonezawa for providing unpublished data concerning the dynamics of vitamin B12 in the BOT-22 culture and Masato Baba for helpful discussions about the EST survey of B. braunii. This work was financially supported by the Core Research of Evolutional Science & Technology program from the Japan Science and Technology Agency.
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Tanabe, Y., Ioki, M. & Watanabe, M.M. The fast-growing strain of hydrocarbon-rich green alga Botryococcus braunii, BOT-22, is a vitamin B12 autotroph. J Appl Phycol 26, 9–13 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10811-013-0045-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10811-013-0045-0