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Hindi The Oil-Producing Microalga Botryococcus Braunii: A Method for Isolation from the Natural Environment and Perspectives on the Role of Ecological Studies in Algal Biofuel Production
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Copyright: © 2020 . This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
The oil-producing microalgae Botryococcus braunii accumulates petroleum-like hydrocarbons in large quantities
that can be processed into renewable biofuels such as biodiesel. Algal biofuel is expected to become a next
generation, carbon-neutral bioenergy source, as microalgal oils are made from carbon dioxide fixed by
photosynthesis, but industrial-scale algal biofuel production has not yet been achieved. Algal biofuel research tends
to be laboratory-based, such as for bioreactor optimization and the genetic engineering of algae, but ecological
research conducted in the field, such as investigating wild algae ecology in natural environments, promises
breakthrough potential in algal biofuel studies. This paper aims to introduce a simple method for isolating B. braunii
from natural environments and our recent work on a DNA-based method for the detection of B. braunii in natural
environments, and to discuss how ecological studies may contribute to the development of the algal biofuel
production.
