Green microalgae as an alternative for production of plant-derived drugs

Paclitaxel is a drug obtained from plants of the genus Taxus. It is used for numerous anticancer treatments which require a high demand that current semisynthetic means of production are not able to supply. For this reason, industry is directing its research towards microbial platforms to manufacture metabolites which can be more efficient and cost-effective than plant systems. An unexplored field in metabolic engineering is using microalgae as an alternative platform for production of pharmaceuticals. They result advantageous, considering features like photoautotrophy and encapsulation that make it an appealing platform. The present work designs a metabolic engineering trial employing the plastome of Chlamydomonas reinhardtii to produce taxadien-5α-acetate-10β-ol, an advanced paclitaxel precursor. This study takes advantage that part of the pathway towards Paclitaxel is already encoded in the nucleus and localized in the chloroplast which reduced the genes required to produce the compound to five. The required sequences could be cloned into the plastome using serial transformation with two plasmids. The resulting scheme for metabolic engineering for C. reinhardtii shows feasibility to produce the precursor. Future research will have to focus on improving the metabolic network of the alga as well as the genes required to enhance production of the metabolite. Eventually, microalgal platforms will be able to compete with classical bacteria and yeast and considered for production of other plant-based pharmaceuticals.

• Autor principal: Jijón Vélez, Santiago Isaac (author)
• Formato: bachelorThesis
• Idioma: eng
• Publicado em: 2020
• Assuntos: Transplastómica; Chlamydomonas reinhardtii; Microalgas; Paclitaxel; Ingeniería metabólica; Transplastomics; Microalgae; Metabolic engineering
• Acesso em linha: http://repositorio.yachaytech.edu.ec/handle/123456789/275