| Microalgae can be grown as immobilized biofilms with a high potential for the production of biofuel and bioproducts. This thesis investigates the community structure and microbial community dynamics of engineered microalgal biofilms. Our research looked specifically at understanding how different concentrations (12% versus 0.04%) of CO2 may affect the diversity of the microbial community in engineered microalgal biofilm photobioreactors originally seeded with Scenedesmus obliquus. DNA was extracted from biofilm samples at specific intervals over a 26-day experiment and used for Sanger and Illumina MiSeq based sequencing of the 16S rRNA and 18S rRNA genes. It was determined that the communities detected on day 4 in both the 12% and 0.04% CO2 treatments was dominated by the seed species, S. obliquus, but by day 26, Leptolyngbya sp. was the dominant species. Therefore, further efforts will be needed to optimize growth conditions to favour species producing the most desirable biomass. |
