In our idea of using microalgaes to fixate CO2 and incorporated said CO2 into biopolymers to use these in order to cultivate Vibrio Natriegens, lies one main problem: How do we gain access to the sugars, proteins and other biopolymers? Bacteria as well as mammal cells are easy to open, but what about microalgae? No one in our iGEM team has experience with microalgae`s, therefore a lot of different ideas for the dismantling of the microalgae were found. These ideas ranged from the microwave to the high throughput homogenizer all the way to the classic mortar. None of these methods were able to completely convince. An idea steered us in another direction: autolysis of the microalgae. With an acid milieu and at 50°C the microalgae should surely undergo an autolytic process. This thought failed in our experiments as well. However, a combination of autolysis using distilled water at pH 3 and at 50°C with a subsequent destruction of the algae pellet using the stirred ball mill did the trick.
Now, we are able to analyse the microalgae extract and can dedicate our further research to assemble the medium!
