CATALYST (2016-2017)

Strategic Partnerships with New-Zealand. Pipeline for optimizing production of bioactive ingredients/molecules from microalgae strains.

Funded by the New-Zeland the Business Innovation and Employment ministry, the Catalyst project fosters a R&D collaboration group involving the Cawthron Institute, the University of Auckland (UoA) and the  Ifremer PBA laboratory. The aim of the project is to create a research partnership working on developing and applying microalgal technologies to enhance production of bioactive molecules. Outcomes will directly feed into existing and future focused research that is looking at the actual bio-actives and novel foods, and their efficacy, and result in commercially viable foods and bioactive extracts. Within this framework new lipid rich microalgae strains have been studied by combining the approaches of the three partners:

• fine-tuned metabolism of microalgae cultures in photobioreactors (Ifremer),
• Lipid droplet mapping by confocal microscopy (UoA – INRA Nantes BIA platform) (UoA – INRA Nantes BIA plateform),
• lipid profile analysis (Cawthron institute)