I am willing to culture scenedesmus at laboratory scale to find the total lipid content available after extraction. Can someone please describe the monitoring factors to be noted down during the growth, and any books/journals?
This is a very broad question, because the methods used to grow scenedesmus can significantly impact the total lipid content of the cell. This paper http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167701213001826 gives a general method for growing algae. The important thing to monitor during growth are growth rate, temperature, pH and nutrient levels. Two other articles that may help are
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10811-011-9782-0 which shows how to induce high lipid levels in bioreactors. However, if you are limited to growth in flasks I would also look at the following article which shows growth in flasks and suggests 24 hour light for high lipid if only looking for high lipid content. http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10811-010-9633-4 If you provide more details on how you plan on growing the algae I may be able to provide more insight. If you are growing scenedemus I would suggest growing it on either bolds basal medium or BG-11 modified to 1/6th its concentration so that it has approximately 3 mM-N same as bolds.
Dear Bharadwaj,
Microalgal growth can be monitored by any of the following ways.
1. Chlorophyll
2. Biomass (dry)
3. Absorbance.
See, which kind of chlorophyll is in your organism (either a or b). Chlorophyll can be extracted by methanol or acetone. Dry biomass of the organism can also be used as a growth factor. Calculate as mg of dry biomass per litre of medium. The third method, u can simple read the absorbance of your species at the lambda max of your organism. As it's microalgae and not filamentous, there wont be any problem of clumps in the culture which could cause problem is some cases.
Gud luck....
Spectrophotometric methods is more easier than other ways for algae growth monitoring. For this case, you can monitor the growth by reading a special wavelength (between 500-600 nm). Because in these wavelength chlorophyll, cartenoides and xantophyll absorption is very low.
for lipid, i think FTIR methos is suitable. please see:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jctb.4027/abstract
Thanks everyone for the information. Can I have the maximum amount of oil that can be taken out from strains Gloeocapsa and Oscillatoria? I am unable to find it on the web.
Growth of micro algae can be measured by chlorophyll-a extraction by 95% acetone , direct measurements of optical density by spectrometer, and dry weight
The growth can be measured by using spectrophotometer, flow cytometer, cell counting, and direct biomass dry weight. It is possible to measure the chlorophyll if the growth of the algae is in autotrophic condition.
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