Red alga genes work the same wherever scientists insert them
Teles K, Wellman GB, Zhang Y, de Freitas BB, Slat VA
Synthetic Biology
The ancient red algae living in hot volcanic springs are distant cousins of the plants in your garden, and this work shows they can be turned into tidy, predictable factories for renewable materials like rubber ingredients.
Scientists studied a simple, heat-loving red alga that lives in acidic hot springs. They found 38 safe spots in its DNA where a new gene can be added, and the gene worked about the same in every spot. They used it to make isoprene, a chemical used in rubber and fuels, which makes this alga a promising, easy-to-engineer tiny factory.
Key Findings
Mapped 40 candidate neutral intergenic sites across 16 of 20 chromosomes in C. merolae, and validated 38 through robotic-assisted transformation.
Reporter gene expression was highly uniform across all integration sites and large populations of transformants, showing minimal positional effects.
Single-copy integrants produced comparable isoprene from a heterologous isoprene synthase regardless of genome position, measured with photobioreactors coupled to headspace analysis.
chevron_right Technical Summary
Researchers found 38 reliable spots in the genome of a tiny heat-loving red alga where new genes can be inserted and work equally well. That removes a major guessing game for engineering algae to make useful compounds like isoprene, a building block for rubber and fuels.
Abstract Preview
Original paper
Genome position does not impact transgene expression efficiency in the ancient red alga Cyanidioschyzon merolae.
The thermoacidophilic red alga Cyanidioschyzon merolae represents one of the simplest photosynthetic eukaryotes and an ancient divergent group in the primary endosymbiotic Rhodophyta. Because of it...
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