Abstract
The microalga Euglena gracilis is utilized in the food, medicinal, and supplement industries. However, its mass production is currently limited by its low production efficiency and high risk of microbial contamination. In this study, physiological and biochemical parameters of E. gracilis co-cultivated with the bacteria Vibrio natriegens were investigated. A previous study reports the benefits of E. gracilis and V. natriegens co-cultivation; however, no bacterium growth and molecular mechanisms were further investigated. Our results show that this co-cultivation positively increased total chlorophyll, microalgal growth, dry weight, and storage sugar paramylon content of E. gracilis compared to the pure culture without V. natriegens. This analysis represents the first comprehensive metabolomic study of microalgae-bacterial co-cultivation, with 339 metabolites identified. This co-cultivation system was shown to have synergistic metabolic interactions between microalgal and bacterial cells, with a significant increase in methyl carbamate, ectoine, choline, methyl N-methylanthranilate, gentiatibetine, 4R-aminopentanoic acid, and glu-val compared to the cultivation of E. gracilis alone. Taken together, these results fill significant gaps in the current understanding of microalgae-bacteria co-cultivation systems and provide novel insights into potential improvements for mass production and industrial applications of E. gracilis.
Highlights
Euglena gracilis is a single-celled flagellate alga with characteristics typical of both plants and animals, including the lack of a cell wall
When the control entered the stationary phase after 6 days and the cell division slowed, the co-cultivation group continued to divide rapidly
After visualizing the differential metabolites in the form of volcano plots in Figure 3D (VIP > 1 and p-value < 0.05), it can be found that the differences between the control group and the co-cultivation group were significant
Summary
Euglena gracilis is a single-celled flagellate alga with characteristics typical of both plants and animals, including the lack of a cell wall. E. gracilis possesses two flagella for cell mobility (Zakrys et al, 2017). E. gracilis cells are rich in minerals, amino acids, unsaturated fatty acids, lutein, chlorophyll, zeaxanthin and 59 other essential nutrients for human health. It can be used to produce many valuable products, such as α-tocopherol, wax esters and paramylon (Kottuparambil et al, 2019). The low production efficiency in the largescale cultivation of E. gracilis limits its further development. We sought to determine whether the novel approach of utilizing co-cultivation would improve the efficacy of E. gracilis production
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