Qintao Wang

Qingdao Institute of Bioenergy and Bioprocess Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences · single cell center

Rubisco large-subunit methyltransferase (LSMT), a SET-domain protein lysine methyltransferase, catalyzes the formation of trimethyl-lysine in the large subunit of Rubisco or in fructose-1,6-bisphosphate aldolases (FBAs). Rubisco and FBAs are both vital proteins involved in CO2 fixation in chloroplasts; however, the physiological effect of their tri...

Epigenetic marks on histones and DNA, such as DNA methylation at N6-adenine (6mA), play crucial roles in gene expression and genome maintenance, but their deposition and function in microalgae remain largely uncharacterized. Here, we report a genome-wide 6mA map for the model industrial oleaginous microalga Nannochloropsis oceanica produced by sing...

Depending on their fatty acid chain length, triacylglycerols (TAGs) have distinct applications; thus, a feedstock with a genetically designed chain length is desirable to maximize process efficiency and product versatility. Here, ex vivo, in vitro, and in vivo profiling of the large set of type-2 diacylglycerol acyltransferases (NoDGAT2s) in the in...

Oleaginous microalgae can produce triacylglycerol (TAG) under stress, yet the underlying mechanism remains largely unknown. Here, we show that, in Nannochloropsis oceanica , a bZIP-family regulator NobZIP77 represses the transcription of a type-2 diacylgycerol acyltransferase encoding gene NoDGAT2B under nitrogen-repletion (N+), while nitrogen-depl...

The chain length (CL) of fatty acids (FAs) is pivotal to oil property, yet to what extent it can be customized in industrial oleaginous microalgae is unknown. In Nannochloropsis oceanica, to modulate long-chain FAs (LCFAs), we first discovered a fungi/bacteria-originated polyketide synthase (PKS) system which involves a cytoplasmic acyl-ACP thioest...

Industrial microalgae are promising photosynthetic cell factories, yet tools for large‐scale targeted genome engineering are limited. Here for the model industrial oleaginous microalga Nannochloropsis oceanica we established a method to precisely and serially delete large genome fragments of ~100 kb from its 30.01‐Mb nuclear genome. We started by i...

The unicellular industrial oleaginous microalgae Nannochloropsis spp. are model organisms for microalgal systems and synthetic biology. To facilitate community‐based annotation and mining of the rapidly accumulated functional genomics resources, we have initiated an international consortium and present a comprehensive, multi‐omics resource database...

Improving acid tolerance is pivotal to the development of microalgal feedstock for converting flue gas to biomass or oils. In the industrial oleaginous microalga Nannochloropsis oceanica, transcript knockdown of a cytosolic carbonic anhydrase (CA2), which is a key Carbon Concentrating Mechanism (CCM) component induced under 100 ppm CO 2 (very low c...

Microalgal oils, depending on their degree of unsaturation, can be utilized as either nutritional supplements or fuels, thus a feedstock with genetically designed and tunable degree of unsaturation is desirable to maximize process efficiency and product versatility. Systematic profiling of ex vivo (in yeast), in vitro and in vivo activities of type...

Eukaryotic microalgae are promising cell factories for photosynthesis-driven CO2 sequestration and oil production, however one key challenge has been to genetically enhance their biomass productivity. Here we showed that the biomass productivity of a model industrial oleaginous microalga Nannochloropsis oceanica can be elevated by overexpression of...

Microalgae are promising feedstock for renewable fuels such as biodiesel, yet development of industrial oleaginous strains has been hindered by the paucity and inefficiency of reverse genetics tools. Here we established an efficient RNAi-based targeted gene knockdown method for Nannochloropsis spp., which are emerging model organisms for industrial...

Microalgae are promising feedstock for biofuels yet mechanistic probing of their cellular network and industrial strain development have been hindered by lack of genome editing tools. Nannochloropsis spp. are emerging model microalgae for scalable oil production and carbon sequestration. Here we established a CRISPR/Cas9-based precise genome editin...

The origin of phytohormones is poorly understood and their physiological roles in microalgae remain elusive. Genome comparison of photosynthetic autotrophic eukaryotes revealed that biosynthetic pathways of abscisic acid (ABA) and cytokinin (CK) emerged in unicellular algae. While ABA and CK degradation mechanism emerged phylogenetically broadly in...