An Alkaliphilic Cyanobacterial Consortium for Air-Capture and Conversion of Carbon dioxide
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Cyanobacteria encompass a diverse group of photosynthetic Bacteria with important roles in nature and biotechnology. The ability of cyanobacteria to fix carbon dioxide (CO2) through oxygenic photosynthesis, with minimal nutritional requirements and non-potable water, has led to their adoption for bio-production of high-value nutraceuticals. While cyanobacteria-based biotechnologies hold much potential for the production of bio-products, there remain several challenges for efficient and cost-effective implementation of this technology at scale. This thesis explores multiple innovative approaches to overcome those challenges using a cyanobacterial consortium, enriched from phototrophic microbial mats of alkaline soda lakes in British Columbia, Canada. First, the cyanobacterial consortium was investigated as an alkaline capture and conversion system (chapter 2). This study demonstrated successful cyanobacterial growth at a pH above 11, with high and robust biomass productivity. And for the first time, feasibility of direct capture of CO2 from the atmosphere into the spent medium was shown. In chapter 3, a combination of Nanopore and Illumina sequencing was used to obtain a complete genome of the abundant cyanobacterium of the consortium, provisionally named Candidatus “Phormidium alkaliphilum”. Evolutionary changes in the genome during three years of laboratory cultivation were investigated and differences in gene content between alkaliphilic and neutral pH Phormidium species were studied. Favourable genomic factors contributing to the ecological success of this genus in both alkaline soda lakes and in photobioreactors were discussed. Lastly, in chapter 4, the community composition of the consortium’s heterotrophic members and their ecological interactions with Ca P. alkaliphilum were analyzed using metagenomics, metaproteomics, and stable isotope probing/proteomics. Adaptation to different photobioreactors (tubular and stirred) at different pH and with different nitrogen sources (ammonium, urea, and nitrate) was explored. Genome information from each heterotrophic population was investigated for six ecological niches created by cyanobacterial metabolism and one niche for phototrophy, explaining the robustness of the system. In conclusion, this work explored innovative solutions based on biological and chemical mechanisms to improve the feasibility of cyanobacterial biotechnology and expanded current knowledge on ecological interactions of the genus Phormidium in its natural environment.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".