Biochemistry Commons^™

Making Chlamydomonas Reinhardtii A Better Model Organism: Tackling The Inefficiency Of Nuclear Transgene Expression And Improving Methods For The Generation And Characterization Of Insertional Mutant Libraries, Thomas M. Plucinak

Department of Biochemistry: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The green algal species Chlamydomonas reinhardtii possesses many beneficial features that have made it a useful model organism for many decades. Many types of experimentation however are difficult to conduct with this organism due to the relative under-development of genetic tools available for use. Tasks such as transgene expression, overexpression of proteins of interest (POIs) or site specific genomic modification that are routine in other more facile microbial model organisms such as Escherichia coli and yeast are difficult to accomplish in C. reinhardtii. The second chapter of this thesis describes the development of a novel nuclear transgene expression system …

Transcriptomic Analyses Of The Co2-Concentrating Mechanisms And Development Of Molecular Tools For Chlamydomonas Reinhardtii, Andrew J. Brueggeman

Department of Biochemistry: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Microalgae, such as Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, account for a large percentage of photosynthesis that occurs on the planet. Many algae possess a Carbon-Concentrating Mechanism, or CCM, that actively transports inorganic carbon (C_i) into the cell to create artificially high internal levels of CO₂, enhancing their rate of carbon fixation. The production of biofuels from algal sources can serve as both a renewable and carbon-neutral energy source. This thesis details research in Chlamydomonas, in the effort to both better understand the CCM in algae and improve laboratory and industrial manipulations with algae.

In the first chapter of this …