Part:BBa_K2984013

One restricting factor for cultivating microalgae is the high risk of contamination with bacteria, fungi or zooplankton. As our Team anticipates in building a bioreactor it is essential to sterilize the media and all containers which raises the costs of production. Loera-Quezada et al. (2016) found a way to bypass this problem by integrating Pseudomonas stutzeri WM88 gene ptxD in C. reinhardtii. It encodes a phosphite oxidoreductase which is able to oxidize phosphite into phosphate using NAD+ as a cofactor (White & Metcalf, 2007). The integration of ptxD into the genome of C. reinhardtii enables the use of phosphite as a sole phosphorus source which wasn’t possible before (Loera-Quezada et al., 2015). Loera-Quezada et al. (2016) presented a new way of microalgae production without the need for sterile conditions or antibiotics to avoid contamination with biological pollutants as they can’t use phosphite as a phosphorus source. In the future this system could also by applied to open pond systems.