Increase of the yields of eicosapentaenoic and docosahexaenoic acids by the microalga Pavlova lutheri following random mutagenesis

• Autor(a) principal: Meireles, Luís A.
• Data de Publicação: 2003
• Outros Autores: Guedes, A. Catarina, Malcata, F. Xavier
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.14/6844
• topic: Genetics; EPA; DHA; Microorganisms; PUFA

The high commercial values of eicosapentaenoic (EPA) and docosahexaenoic (DHA) acids have driven a strain-improvement program, aimed at increasing the content of those fatty acids in the microalga Pavlova lutheri (SMBA 60) as parent strain. After a round of mutation using UV-light as mutagenic agent, an isolate strain (tentatively called II#2) was obtained, the EPA and DHA contents of which (in % dry biomass) were 32.8% and 32.9% higher than those of the control, native strain. The final EPA yields, when the cultures were maintained under appropriate conditions, were 17.4 and 23.1 mg · g−1 dry biomass, for the wild-type and the II#2 strain, respectively, whereas the final DHA yields were 8.0 and 10.6 mg · g−1 dry biomass, respectively. These results suggest that random mutagenesis can successfully be applied to increase the yield of n-3 fatty acids by microalgae.