PROPEL : PlatfoRm fOr Photosynthetic cEll cuLture

近年来，人们对用于生物技术应用的光合作用细胞如微藻和植物细胞的兴趣一直在增长。这些光合作用细胞能够从太阳能、二氧化碳和水中快速产生生物质和大分子，具有广泛的潜在应用。目前的赠款申请旨在支持开发一个光合作用细胞培养平台，以下称为PREPEL。PROPEL将支持微藻和植物细胞的多样化但互补性的研究项目，这些项目由魁北克河滨大学的I.Desgagné-Penix(IDP)、T.Missihoun(TM)和H.Germain(HG)教授领导。 对于三个共同申请者的NSERC领导的研究计划来说，迫切需要的PREPEL平台是必要的，并将有助于解决非常不同的问题(植物新陈代谢和合成生物学，植物生物化学和胁迫，植物对生物营养病原体的反应)，但用于研究这些问题的光合作用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作用培养箱摇床，用于无菌光合作用细胞培养、生物量生产、生长动力学分析、大分子研究、筛选和生物加工。这将导致植物生物化学、新陈代谢和免疫方面的重要进展。除了这些进展之外，大量的学生将接受使用PREPEL进行基础研究分析的培训，这是所有细胞生物学研究人员所需的高度可移植的技能。

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.