Inhibición de la enzima fitoeno desaturasa y acumulación de fitoeno en microalgasel irna como mecanismo de silenciamiento génico

Resum

The marine organisms, and especially the microalgae, are important source of natural products with potencial in therapeutic and industrial applications. Specifically, microalgae are one of the main sources of a wide number of carotenoids, like ß-carotene, phytoene, astaxanthin or lutein. These carotenoids are important because of their antioxidant character and can be used as colour additives, provitamins and therapeutic molecules. Nevertheless, their production at industrial scale has yet to be improved, being the molecular biology an important tool to understand and optimize the process. This work has a first approach where the understanding of the carotenogenesis (the route of synthesis of carotenoids) was the main goal. Then, the manipulation of this route was also studied. In this sense, the accumulation of phytoene in microalgae was evaluated by using chemical mechanisms (inhibitors) and genetic mechanisms (genes silencing). By other hand, obtaining sensitives mutants to high light allowed us to know more about the carotenogenesis too.