Advances on lipid metabolism in Chlamydomonas reinhardtii

Abstract:

The compounds derive from lipid metabolism in microalgae have important economic value, which can be used for the production of biofuels, nutraceuticals and green chemicals. Lipid metabolism processes are important in growth and development of microalgae and the response to stress. There are many similarities among microalgae, fungi and land plants in terms of lipid metabolism. With the recent advances in identification of functional genes related to lipid metabolism in microalgae, it has been found that lipid metabolism in microalgae have uncovered unique features, pointing out the necessity to analyze lipid metabolism in microalgae themselves. Chlamydomonas reinhardtii is a model organism to study lipid metabolism. Methods such as genom, transcriptom, proteom and metabolom are used to analyze lipid synthesis and lipid degradation processes in plastid, endoplasmic reticulum, and peroxisome. In this review, the authors summarized the recent research progress of lipid metabolism occurs in plastid, endoplasmic reticulum and peroxisome in Chlamydomonas reinhardtii.