Reduced Photosynthetic Pigment Contents Improved the Productivity of Photosynthetic Microorganisms

초록

In high density photosynthetic cultures, light is almost always the limiting factor. As the cell density goes up, the light penetrating depth will be dramatically decreased. One of the solution to overcome this problem is to reduce the photosynthetic pigment contents per cell. However, the concept is hard to prove experimentally. In this work, a wild type and a LHⅡ- mutant of Rhodobacter sphaeroides were cultured to investigate the feasibility of this idea. The inherent properties of the strains (specific growth rate, light absorption per cell, pigments content per cell, compensation and saturation light intensity) were determined by changing light intensities. The experimental data showed that the reduced photosynthetic pigment contents under a high-intensity light without photoinhibition helped the volumetric productivity of photosynthetic microorganisms.