QTB Team Details

Project Description:

Phosphorus is a finite non-renewable resource essential for the synthesis of key biological components such as nucleic acid, phospholipids and ATP. It is the second most frequent nutrient that limits the plant growth after nitrogen. Nevertheless, the efficiency of P usage hardly reaches 20% with the rest either ends in waste water or is carried away by runoff from fields to the rivers and oceans. One of the strategy to recycle this element for reuse involves exploiting the capability of phototrophic microalgae to accumulate large P quantities which could be used as a bio-fertiliser to soil in order to close the cycle from waste back to agriculture.

This project is part of AlgalFertilizer, funded by BioSC Boost, which together with theoretical and experimental partners aim to investigate the capability of Chlorella vulgaris to uptake P from waste water and the molecular mechanisms underlying P uptake and storage in algae. It further aims to investigate the uptake mechanism of algae‐derived fertiliser by plants and the efficiency of this fertiliser as compared to the traditional fertilisers. This project particularly aims to develop the mathematical models to derive a systemic understanding of the P cycle in order to optimise the P uptake and storage, reproduce the experimental data and thus, provides an explanation for underlying dynamics of P pool in the algal cell under different environmental conditions.

Short CV of Dipali Singh