From November 14, 2019 to January 14, 2021
This 12 months secondement took place in the Hellenic Center for Marine Research (HCMR) in Crete, Greece, under the supervision of Dr Frederic Verret.
First, we focused on large culturing and biomass collection of blue and non-blue diatom species from the genus Haslea, to measure and compare their Highly Branched Isoprenoids (HBIs) content. Then, we generated transgenic Phaeodactylum tricornutum lines overexpressing two terpene synthase genes from Haslea ostrearia, to determine their cellular localization, role and potential involvement in the HBIs metabolic pathway. This second part required assembling the genes into transcriptional units using Type II restriction enzymes and cloning them in specific diatom expression vectors.
