Dinoflagellates are microalgae which produce a wide range of toxins. These toxins are mostly unknown (only 1% have been identified) but they have proven to be efficient in different market applications: drug discovery, food safety testing, biopesticides.
Culture of dinoflagellates (and thus production of toxins) is not mastered by current technologies due to their extreme sensitivity to shearing forces. For this reason laboratories have to culture them in static conditions resulting in very low production yield. The current price of toxins isolated from dinoflagellates is very high (3 – 30 k€/ mg), reflecting the difficulties to culture them. Consequently, these toxins are poorly exploited despite their renowned potential. PLANKTOVIE has developed a disruptive patented technology (Soft Mixer) which enables efficient dinoflagellate culture at high yield level, drastically decreasing the costs of production. During the course of this project the Soft Mixer technology has been combined with a carbonation membrane to increase the intake of CO2 in the culture, resulting in the development of a 200L-DINOPHYT photobioreactor. The objectives of the project has been to demonstrate the production of dinoflagellates at high yield and preindustrial scale up levels. We have designed a 200L-DINOPHYT photobioreactor combining a finely tuned carbonation system and a rotating vessel. This photobioreactor has been used to culture dinoflagellates spp selected for their capacities to produce toxins. Culture conditions have then be established in order to maximize the dinoflagellate growth yield as well as their capacity to produce toxins. In a first stage, parameters such as rotation speed, light intensity and CO2 have been investigated to optimize the system. Later on, other parameters, such as nutrients and toxin-specific inducers will be also studied to increase the level of toxin production.
