Improvement and screening of astaxanthin producing mutants of newly isolated Coelastrum sp. using ethyl methane sulfonate induced mutagenesis technique

Ameerah Tharek; Adibah Yahya; Madihah Md Salleh; Haryati Jamaluddin; Shinji Yoshizaki; Hirofumi Hara; Koji Iwamoto; Iwane Suzuki; Shaza Eva Mohamad

doi:10.1016/j.btre.2021.e00673

Improvement and screening of astaxanthin producing mutants of newly isolated Coelastrum sp. using ethyl methane sulfonate induced mutagenesis technique

Biotechnol Rep (Amst). 2021 Sep 15:32:e00673. doi: 10.1016/j.btre.2021.e00673. eCollection 2021 Dec.

Authors

Ameerah Tharek¹, Adibah Yahya², Madihah Md Salleh², Haryati Jamaluddin², Shinji Yoshizaki³, Hirofumi Hara¹, Koji Iwamoto¹, Iwane Suzuki⁴, Shaza Eva Mohamad^{1

3}

Affiliations

¹ Malaysia Japan International Institute of Technology (MJIIT), Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering (CHEE), Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Jalan Sultan Yahya Petra, 54100, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
² Faculty of Science, Department of Biosciences, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 81310, UTM Johor Bahru, Malaysia.
³ Tokyo City University, Faculty of Environmental Studies, 3-3-1 Ushikubo nishi Tsuzuki-ku, Yokohama, Kanagawa 224-8551, Japan.
⁴ Graduate School of Life and Environmental Sciences, 1-1-1 Tennodai, University of Tsukuba, Tsukuba, 305-8572, Japan.

Abstract

Natural astaxanthin is known to be produced by green microalgae, a potent producer of the most powerful antioxidant. To increase the productivity of astaxanthin in microalgae, random mutagenesis has been extensively used to improve the yield of valuable substances. In the presented work, a newly isolated Coelastrum sp. was randomly mutagenized by exposure to ethyl methane sulfonate and further screened using two approaches; an approach for high growth mutant and an approach for high astaxanthin producing mutant with a high-throughput screening method using glufosinate. Among these, mutant G1-C1 that was selected using glufosinate showed the highest of total carotenoids (45.48±1.5 mg/L) and astaxanthin (28.32±2.5 mg/L) production, which was almost 2-fold higher than that of wild type. This study indicates that random mutagenesis via chemical mutation strategy and screening using glufosinate successfully expedited astaxanthin production in a mutated strain of a Coelastrum sp.

Keywords: Astaxanthin; Coelastrum sp.; Ethyl methane sulfonate; Glufosinate; Mutagenesis.