But, a shortcoming of B. braunii is its relatively slow growth rate. While the algae that produce ‘vegetable-type’ oils may double their growth every six to 12 hours, B. braunii‘s doubling rate is about four days, he said.
“Thus, getting large amounts of oil from B. braunii is more time consuming and thus more costly,” Devarenne said. “So, by knowing the genome sequence we can possibly identify genes involved in cell division and manipulate them to reduce the doubling rate.”
Despite these characteristics and economic potential of algae, only six species of algae have had their genomes fully sequenced and annotated, Devarenne said. And B. braunii is not one of the six.
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