PROPEL : PlatfoRm fOr Photosynthetic cEll cuLture

近年来，对光合细胞如微藻和植物细胞用于生物技术应用的兴趣一直在增长。这些光合细胞能够从太阳能、CO2和水快速产生生物质和大分子，具有广泛的潜在应用。本资助申请旨在支持光合细胞培养平台的开发，以下简称PROPEL。PROPEL将支持微藻和植物细胞的多样化但互补的研究计划，这些计划由I。Desgagné-Penix（IDP），T. Mishoun（TM）和H. Germain（HG）在魁北克大学（UQTR）。 急需的PROPEL平台是三个共同申请人的NSERC领导的研究计划所必需的，并将有助于解决非常不同的问题（植物代谢和合成生物学，植物生物化学和胁迫，植物对活体营养病原体的反应），但用于研究这些问题的光合细胞的基本培养和生长是相似的。它包括一个生物安全柜和四个光合培养摇床，用于无菌光合细胞培养、生物量生产、生长动力学分析、大分子研究、筛选和生物加工，将导致植物生物化学、代谢和免疫的重要进展。除了这些进步，大量的学生将接受培训，使用PROPEL进行基础研究分析，这是所有细胞生物学研究人员所需的高度可转移技能。

Interest in photosynthetic cells such as microalgae and plant cells for biotechnological applications has been growing in recent years. These photosynthetic cells are able to rapidly generate biomass and macromolecules from solar energy, CO2 and water, for a wide range of potential applications. The present grant application aims to support the development of a PlatfoRm fOr Photosynthetic cEll cuLture hereafter referred to as PROPEL. PROPEL will support the diverse but complementary research programs on microalgae and plant cells, which are led by the professors I. Desgagné-Penix (IDP), T. Missihoun (TM) and H. Germain (HG) at Université du Québec à Trois-Rivères (UQTR). The much needed PROPEL platform is necessary for the NSERC-lead research programs of the three co-applicants, and will help to address very distinct questions (plant metabolism and synthetic biology, plant biochemistry and stress, plant response to biotrophic pathogen), but the basic culture and growth of photosynthetic cells used to study these questions are similar. It comprises a biosafety cabinet and four photosynthetic incubator shakers to be used for sterile photosynthetic cell culture, biomass production, growth kinetics analysis, macromolecules study, screening and bioprocessing.These will lead to important advances in plant biochemistry, metabolism and immunity. In addition to these advances, a large number of students will be trained to perform basic studies assays using PROPEL, highly transferable skills that are required for all cell biology researchers.