The Comparison of Heavy Metal Binding Properties and Tolerance between Transgenic Strains and Wild Type in Chlamydomonas reinhardtii

Abstract

The Comparison of the heavy metal binding properties and tolerance was studied between wild type and transgenic strains which expressed a foreign MT like gene from Festuca rubraL Merlin in Chlamydomonas reinhardtii. The results showed that the cadmium binding capacity of transgenic strain was 1.5 fold of the wild type in low cadmium concentration(5-10μmol/L) , however, there was not marked difference of heavy metal binding capacity in high cadmium concentrtion (30-50μmol/L). It indicated that the difference of heavy metal binding capacity was from active uptake between transgenic strain and wild type. On the other hand, transgenic strain also showed more higher tolerance than wild type when they were cultured in 150μmol/L copper solution medium and 600μmol/L cadmium agar medium. Transgenic strain was used to treat wastewater, it could enhance more than 10% of copper removal efficiency than wild type.