Zīst/shināsī-i Giyāhī-i Īrān (Sep 2016)
Molecular study of the chlorella algae and determining its functional features with the approach of hydrogenase gene expression
Abstract
Biohydrogen production by biological processes are known as a renewable energy source. The aim of the investigation was to find and optimize the most appropriate medium for the algae growth to produce the maximum amount of hydrogen. First of all, the bioinformatics and biosystematics studies were taken for identifying the collected microalgae which was detected as Chlorella with the following features: spherical appearance, spent protozoan, Cup-shaped chloroplast with no flagella. On the other hand, the molecular analysis by PCR and 18S sequence typing of interested microalgae demonstrated 100% similarity to that well known sequences for Chlorella vulgaris. Second, we assessed some culture media including BBM, Chu10, TAP, and Sorokin and Krauss for optimum growth conditions for Chlorella vulgaris. In general, our results showed that BBM medium had the highest efficiency for producing microalgae biomass under following conditions: pH=8, temperature of 30 ° with 16 to 8 h light to darkness periods ratio.Third, we designed a more efficient photo-bioreactor apparatus toward inducing more powerful bio-hydrogen production by hydrogenase enzyme activity of our given microalgae. Then, the performance of the apparatus as well as the gene expression was scrutinized under different conditions (light, pH, sulphorous, etc.). For this, after extracting RNA and constructing cDNA, hydrogenase gene was amplified with PCR and the product was evaluated by agarose gel. However, the relative expression of the gene measured by Real Time PCR showed the influence of light, pH and sulphourous on the expression as compared with control.
