Removal of levofloxacin by an oleaginous microalgae Chromochloris zofingiensis under photoautotrophic and heterotrophic conditions

Purpose: The goals of this study are to investigate the global gene expression of Chromochloris zofingiensis when treated with LEV by transcriptome profiling (RNA-seq) analysis. Methods: Chromochloris zofingiensis mRNA profiles of 15-day cultivition Control (Y0) and Treatment (Y10) were generated by deep sequencing, in triplicate, using Illumina NovaSeq platform. The paired-end clean reads that passed quality filters were aligned to reference genome using TopHat v2.0.12 and HTSeq v0.6.1 was used to count the reads numbers mapped to each gene. Differential expression analysis of two conditions was performed using the DEGSeq R package (1.20.0) Results:The results showed that LEV could be bioaccumulated in algal cells and the reactions of demethylation, oxidation, hydroxylation, decarboxylation, dehalogenation and ring cleavage involved in the metabolic pathways play a major role in biodegradation of LEV by heterotrophic C. zofingiensis. Conclusions: . Collectively, this research shows that the heterotrophic C. zofingiensis can be identified as a promising candidate for LEV removal in wastewater remediation. Chromochloris zofingiensis mRNA profiles of 15-day cultivition Control (Y0) and Treatment (Y10)