Diatom mixotrophy. Cylindrotheca sp.

Diatoms have been considered as sustainable cell factories, due to their inherent advantages, to produce high-value bioactive motebolites, such as fucoxanthin. However, its commercilizations, as commonly acknowledged, has been largely hindered by its limited biomass and bioproduct yield. To address this bottleneck, this project has made efforts in the following perspectives. Mixotrophic Cylindrotheca sp. by using both CO2 and glycerol has displayed significantly higher biomass and fucoxanthin productivity than autotrophic culture. The mechanism of light regulation on glycerol assimilation has been elucidated by a time-series transcriptomic analysis, with key light-dependent genes identitenfied. The machanism of biomass promotion by glycerol was also explained by comparative transcriptomic and metabolomic analyses.