Global Metabolome Analysis of Dunaliella tertiolecta, Phaeobacter italicus R11 Co-cultures using Thermal Desoprtion - Comprehensive Two-dimensional Gas Chromatography - Time-of-Flight Mass Spectrometry (TD-GC×GC-TOFMS)

Abstract

AbstractDunaliella tertiolecta is a marine microalgae that has been studied extensively as a potential carbon-neutral biofuel source [1]. Microalgae oil contains high quantities of energy-rich fatty acids and lipids, but is not yet commercially viable as an alternative fuel. Carefully optimised growth conditions, and more recently, algal-bacterial co-cultures have been explored as a way of improving the yield of Dunaliella tertiolecta microalgae oils. The relationship between the host microalgae and bacterial co-cultures is currently poorly understood. Here, a complete workflow is proposed to analyse the global metabolomic profile of co-cultured Dunaliella tertiolectra and Phaeobacter italicus R11, which will enable researchers to explore the chemical nature of this relationship in more detail.Graphical AbstractHighlightsA method for direct microalgae sample introduction is proposed.Advanced chemometric tools can extract, useful and discriminating metabolomic features even from very noisy complex datasets.