An expressed sequence tag analysis of the intertidal brown seaweeds Fucus serratus (L.) and F. vesiculosus (L.) (Heterokontophyta, Phaeophyceae) in response to abiotic stressors

In order to aid gene discovery and uncover genes responding to abiotic stressors in stress-tolerant brown algae of the genus Fucus, expressed sequence tags (ESTs) were studied in two species, Fucus serratus and Fucus vesiculosus. Clustering of over 12,000 ESTs from three libraries for heat shock/recovery and desiccation/rehydration resulted in identification of 2,503, 1,290, and 2,409 unigenes from heat-shocked F. serratus, desiccated F. serratus, and desiccated F. vesiculosus, respectively. Low overall annotation rates (18–31%) were strongly associated with the presence of long 3′ untranslated regions in Fucus transcripts, as shown by analyses of predicted protein-coding sequence in annotated and nonannotated tentative consensus sequences. Posttranslational modification genes were overrepresented in the heat shock/recovery library, including many chaperones, the most abundant of which were a family of small heat shock protein transcripts, Hsp90 and Hsp70 members. Transcripts of LI818-like light-harvesting genes implicated in photoprotection were also expressed during heat shock in high light. The expression of several heat-shock-responsive genes was confirmed by quantitative reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction. However, candidate genes were notably absent from both desiccation/rehydration libraries, while the responses of the two species to desiccation were divergent, perhaps reflecting the species-specific physiological differences in stress tolerance previously established. Desiccation-tolerant F. vesiculosus overexpressed at least 17 ribosomal protein genes and two ubiquitinribosomal protein fusion genes, suggesting that ribosome function and/or biogenesis are important during cycles of rapid desiccation and rehydration in the intertidal zone and possibly indicate parallels with other poikilohydric organisms such as desiccation-tolerant bryophytes

Genetic Engineering of Algae for Enhanced Biofuel Production ▿

There are currently intensive global research efforts aimed at increasing and modifying the accumulation of lipids, alcohols, hydrocarbons, polysaccharides, and other energy storage compounds in photosynthetic organisms, yeast, and bacteria through genetic engineering. Many improvements have been realized, including increased lipid and carbohydrate production, improved H2 yields, and the diversion of central metabolic intermediates into fungible biofuels. Photosynthetic microorganisms are attracting considerable interest within these efforts due to their relatively high photosynthetic conversion efficiencies, diverse metabolic capabilities, superior growth rates, and ability to store or secrete energy-rich hydrocarbons. Relative to cyanobacteria, eukaryotic microalgae possess several unique metabolic attributes of relevance to biofuel production, including the accumulation of significant quantities of triacylglycerol; the synthesis of storage starch (amylopectin and amylose), which is similar to that found in higher plants; and the ability to efficiently couple photosynthetic electron transport to H2 production. Although the application of genetic engineering to improve energy production phenotypes in eukaryotic microalgae is in its infancy, significant advances in the development of genetic manipulation tools have recently been achieved with microalgal model systems and are being used to manipulate central carbon metabolism in these organisms. It is likely that many of these advances can be extended to industrially relevant organisms. This review is focused on potential avenues of genetic engineering that may be undertaken in order to improve microalgae as a biofuel platform for the production of biohydrogen, starch-derived alcohols, diesel fuel surrogates, and/or alkanes