Fwd: Chlamydomonas project

[Mathilde Chopy]

Good afternoon,

Let me introduce myself, my name is Mathilde CHOPY, and I'm a French student at the university of Bordeaux in master 1 Biology and biotechnology of plants.
Me and two other students, have to choose a subject to do an fictiv ANR. We want to work on Chlamydomonas. That is why I send you a mail. I think you can help us for lot of points;
To be more precise, we imagine to use C hlamydomonas reinhardtii for the production of resveratrol . For that it is necessary to introduce one gene that is : STS Stilbene synthase from grapevine.

Here it is the abstract that we imagine :
" Resveratrol is a secondary metabolite that can be found in some plants like Vitis vinifera . In response to an injury such as a fungus, this molecule will act as a phytoalexin. It's also a natural phenol from stilbenoïd class. Linked to the "French paradox", resveratrol and related compounds help stay healthy by lowering risks of cancer and some other heart diseases. Studies have been done on producing this stilbenoïd on yeast and chimical synthesis.
Chlamydomonas reinhardtii is a microalguae well known as a model organism. This microalguae is able to make photosynthesis. It's also an organism able to grow on simple culture medium.
We know the precursors of resveratrol and we know the enzyme that will lead to a resveratrol production. Here, we are transforming our alguae with a gene coming from Vitis vinifera in order to induce resveratrol production in Chlamydomonas reinhardtii . Such a thing is possible thanks to biolistic transformation. Bioreactor culture is a way to grow our tansformants and extract resveratrol and related compunds without pollutants. Furthermore, apart from resveratrol, this study highlights microalguae as a bioproduction platform for protein.

I hope you won't mind, my asking you a few questions;

- I would like to know, how do I choose between all the plasmids that exist ? What is the selection criterion ? http://chlamycollection.org/plasmids/

- According to you, Chlamydomonas can live with this transformation ?

- We see that Chlamydomonas can have sexual and asexual reproduction. During the growing of cells on culture medium, Chlamydomonas mainly use asexual reproduction, isn't it ?

- Is there a perfect culture medium for Chlamydomonas's growth ?

- We heard it was possible to grow them on salted water, is tat true ? What about wasted water ?


I'm sorry for my english mistakes, however I hope you understand all I want to say.

Best regards,
Mathilde CHOPY.