Congratulations Annette!

Yesterday, DynaMo master student Annette Petersen successfully defended her MSc thesis in Biology-Biotechnology in front of a full lecture hall. The title of Annette's thesis is 'Genetic Engineering of Chlamydomonas reinhardtii - Glucosinolate production in green microalgae'.

In her MSc project Annette shows that the green microalga, Chlamydomonas reinhardtii holds potential of being an organism of choice when engineering complex plant biosynthesis pathways, such as glucoraphanin. Glucoraphanin are plant secondary metabolites of particular interest due to their anti-cancerous effects in humans. However, so far engineering of their biosynthesis pathway into a microbial host has been problematic as glucoraphanin are produced through two separate pathways; chain elongation of methionine in the chloroplast followed by core stucture formation in the cytosol. By engineering these two pathways into Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, Annette assessed the alga's potential of expressing multigene exogenous pathways. Her results serve as an important proof of concept of future metabolic engineering in this host.

Congratulations Annette!