Hydrocarbon phenotyping of algal species using pyrolysis-gas chromatography mass spectrometry

BMC Biotechnology

Research Article

Shankar L Kothari¹  Oliver Fiehn²  Do Yup Lee²  Dinesh K Barupal²  Tobias Kind² 

[1] Department of Botany, University of Rajasthan, Jaipur, India;Genome Center, University of California, Davis, USA;

关键词: Microalgae;    Chlamydomonas;    Hydrocarbon Content;    Mass Spectral Library;    Tris Acetate Phosphate;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1472-6750-10-40

 received in 2009-10-23, accepted in 2010-05-21,  发布年份 2010

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundBiofuels derived from algae biomass and algae lipids might reduce dependence on fossil fuels. Existing analytical techniques need to facilitate rapid characterization of algal species by phenotyping hydrocarbon-related constituents.ResultsIn this study, we compared the hydrocarbon rich algae Botryococcus braunii against the photoautotrophic model algae Chlamydomonas reinhardtii using pyrolysis-gas chromatography quadrupole mass spectrometry (pyGC-MS). Sequences of up to 48 dried samples can be analyzed using pyGC-MS in an automated manner without any sample preparation. Chromatograms of 30-min run times are sufficient to profile pyrolysis products from C8 to C40 carbon chain length. The freely available software tools AMDIS and SpectConnect enables straightforward data processing. In Botryococcus samples, we identified fatty acids, vitamins, sterols and fatty acid esters and several long chain hydrocarbons. The algae species C. reinhardtii, B. braunii race A and B. braunii race B were readily discriminated using their hydrocarbon phenotypes. Substructure annotation and spectral clustering yielded network graphs of similar components for visual overviews of abundant and minor constituents.ConclusionPyrolysis-GC-MS facilitates large scale screening of hydrocarbon phenotypes for comparisons of strain differences in algae or impact of altered growth and nutrient conditions.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Barupal et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2010. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.