Abstract
This chapter discusses the preparation and properties of Chlorella mutants in Chlorophyll biosynthesis. Chlorella vulgaris is a unicellular green alga, 3–10μ in diameter, and possesses a single cup-shaped chloroplast containing the pigments—chlorophylls and carotenoids. Chlorella can multiply and synthesize chlorophyll in the dark when grown on a glucose plus inorganic salt medium. Most of the Chlorella mutants obtained may be classified as leaky mutants—that is, mutants incompletely blocked at a particular step. In such a mutant, the activity of some enzyme is greatly diminished leading to an accumulation of one or more precursor substrates and the formation of small amounts of substrates beyond the mutated step. A number of the Chlorella mutants have been isolated, and their pigments have been identified as porphyrins. The structures of these porphyrins have suggested that they are intermediates in chlorophyll biosynthesis. These porphyrins can be arranged into a biosynthetic chain sequence that is reasonable both organochemically and biochemically.
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