When it comes to seaweed, the citizens of the West Coast must be familiar with it. In recent years, the seaweed industry on the west coast has flourished and grown, especially the new area also has the world's largest seaweed processing base. However, how to go further, to a higher end, more advanced, to a broader blue ocean market, the microalgae industry can be described as the key. A few days ago, the reporter visited Qingdao Algae Blue Biological Co., Ltd., which specializes in the microalgae industry on the west coast. Chen Wei, the founder of the company, told reporters that the team he led took microalgae as the core of research, and 30 algae species have an industrialization foundation and have opened promotion at the same time.
▲In the microalgae cultivation laboratory, the containers with different shapes are full of microalgae of various colors.
Magical microalgae
Photosynthesis contributes 50% of the world
Walking into the microalgae cultivation laboratory of Qingdao Algae Cyanobacter Co., Ltd., it is as if entering the ocean of color - in the vast laboratory, the containers with different shapes are full of various colors of microalgae, some are light green juice samples, some are dark green vegetable extracts, and some are dark brown tea soup samples.
Chen Wei pointed to a round flask the size of a football and introduced it to reporters, "Microalgae are divided into single-cell microalgae and group microalgae." Single-celled microalgae are one cell that makes up an organism; population microalgae are made up of multiple cells, or many cells 'bonded' together in a certain way and mechanism. This is a group microalgae we raise. He said that the volume of microalgae is very small, and the dark green pellets in the flask that flip up and down with the air flow are a group of countless microalgae cells. In such a flask, there are more than 60 million microalgae per liter of water.
Chen Wei said while picking up a small triangular container, shaking to show the reporter, "This microalgae is a single-celled microalgae, invisible to the naked eye, can only be distinguished by the microscope." Through the microscope, the reporter saw that the microalgae looked like a piece of "lotus leaf". "Don't look at them as small, they are an indispensable part of the Earth's ecosystem." Chen Wei mentioned that under natural conditions, the principle of microalgae growth is mainly through photosynthesis to fix carbon dioxide in the air, thereby synthesizing the nutrients necessary for their own growth. The efficiency of microalgae photosynthesis is very high, accounting for about 50% of global photosynthesis.
Why is the proportion so large? "Because microalgae are different from kelp, wakame and other marine large algae, those algae can only grow in the waters close to the coastline, in the deep sea they can not photosynthesize; and microalgae can be floating in the sea through the action of water flow, some microalgae themselves have buoyancy control mechanism, so microalgae are also called phytoplankton, they can be regulated by their own buoyancy, distributed throughout the sea." Chen Wei explained.
Explore research
It can play a role in food and medicine
Subsequently, the reporter came to the microalgae breeding and product processing base in Zangma Town.
Outdoors, in rows of enclosed photobioreactors, green microalgae are developing and growing silently; indoors, light incubators, centrifuges, nucleic acid sequence analyzers, automatic protein purifiers and other equipment are readily available. Several researchers were holding beakers and droppers in their hands and meticulously conducting experimental studies.
"Microalgae, as a basic life, appeared on Earth earlier than humans. The early oil on Earth was produced by microalgae. After helping the staff to debug the equipment, Chen Wei turned around and told reporters, "We can convert the fatty acids in microalgae into biodiesel through some subsequent chemical technologies, etc., as an alternative energy source for fossil energy." "In addition, microalgae are also widely used in food, medicine and other fields. For example, many algae can produce a large number of natural active substances, which can be used as pharmaceutical additives or directly as food raw materials for human consumption.
Chen Wei also mentioned that although microalgae are widely distributed on the earth and have great development and utilization value, compared with some macroalgae, the industrialization research and application of microalgae is still a relatively new field.
Chen Wei introduced that he hopes that through his own and his team's efforts, the value of microalgae can be maximized and utilized, not only in carbon peaking and carbon neutrality to play its unique advantages, in providing high-quality food resources and new biomedical raw materials can also play a greater role, especially hope to meet the aging of the social process of people in the process of antioxidant, anti-aging and anti-cardiovascular and cerebrovascular and other fields of active substances and pharmaceutical resources.
"We have laid out a number of research programs in the field of microalgae medicinal resource development, with the aim of finding biomedical resources with novel structure, significant activity and potential application value. Our company has built some drug screening models, including antioxidant and anti-aging life control models, as well as central nervous system diseases, cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases and diabetes and other drug screening models, and we will develop some new drug screening models in the future. Through these techniques and means, we can obtain a large number of biological resources with potential medicinal value from microalgae. Chen Wei said.
Outlook
Large-scale cultivation of oil-producing microalgae
Nowadays, Chen Wei has found some microalgae varieties with development and utilization value and realized artificial cultivation.
"This is the biomass of a cyanobacteria culture that we harvest, and then we will dry these materials, make algae powder and then extract and process it, and develop biomedical products." Chen Wei held a plate of "jujube mud filling" in his hand and said, "At present, human beings have been able to use microalgae to develop drinks and drugs with special effects, which mainly include spirulina and astaxanthin-producing astaxanthin. ”
In addition, microalgae have a broader space for development and utilization. For example, microalgae can be seen as a new type of agriculture. "Planting algae is the same as growing grain and vegetables." Chen Wei pointed out that "the production of microalgae itself requires a lot of labor, and it can also provide a large number of employment opportunities for downstream related industries such as food, feed, health care products, and fine chemicals." ”
Microalgae industry can also improve people's quality of life, in addition to high-end food and health products, the use of microalgae as feed to raise chickens and fish, the quality of these farmed animals will be improved a lot. "So microalgae production is a sustainable green agriculture." Chen Wei hopes that through the team's efforts, microalgae can have an important impact on the future industrial layout.
"In the future, with the breakthrough of microalgae breeding technology and our progress in the field of microalgae germplasm selection, we may also achieve large-scale cultivation of high-yield oil microalgae, so that the production cost of this process is greatly reduced, and finally the purpose of commercial production of biodiesel can be achieved." Chen Wei looked at the countless green microalgae cells in the culture flask in his hand, full of hope.
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