Measurement of Lipid Droplet Accumulation Kinetics in Chlamydomonas reinhardtii Using Seoul-Fluor

Energies

Jae Woo Park²  Sang Cheol Na²  Youngjun Lee¹  Sanghee Lee¹  Seung Bum Park¹ 

[1] Department of Chemistry, Seoul National University, Seoul 151-744, Korea; E-Mails:;Division of WCU (World Class University) Multiscale Mechanical Design, School of Mechanical Engineering, Seoul National University, Seoul 151-744, Korea; E-Mails:

关键词: microalgae;    Chlamydomonas reinhardtii;    SF44;    lipid droplets;    biodiesel;   

DOI  :  10.3390/en6115703

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

Alternative energy resources have become an important issue due to the limited stocks of petroleum-based fuel. Microalgae, a source of renewable biodiesel, use solar light to convert CO₂ into lipid droplets (LDs). Quantification of LDs in microalgae is required for developing and optimizing algal bioprocess engineering. However, conventional quantification methods are both time and labor-intensive and difficult to apply in high-throughput screening systems. LDs in plant and mammalian cells can be visualized by staining with various fluorescence probes such as the Nile Red, BODIPY, and Seoul-Fluor (SF) series. This report describes the optimization of LD staining in Chlamydomonas reinhardtii with SF probes via systematic variations of dye concentration, staining time, temperature, and pH. A protocol for quantitative measurement of accumulation kinetics of LDs in C. reinhardtii was developed using a spectrofluorimeter and the accuracy of LD size measurement was confirmed by transmission electron microscopy (TEM). Our results indicate that our spectrofluorimeter-based measurement approach can monitor kinetics of intracellular LDs (in control and nitrogen-source-starved Chlamydomonas reinhardtii) accumulation that has not been possible in the case of conventional imaging-based methods. Our results presented here confirmed that an SF44 can be a powerful tool for in situ monitoring and tracking of intracellular LDs formation.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2013 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.