From Apr. 9th to 10th, the launch of Sino-German Laboratory for Algal Bioenery was held in Qingdao Institute of Bioenergy and Bioprocess Technology (QIBEBT), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).

Prof. Thomas Happe of the Photobiotechnology Laboratory of Ruhr University Bochum (RUB) and Prof. Alex Mosig of the Bioinformatics Laboratory of RUB, and four additional RUB representatives visited QIBEBT. Prof. Xuefeng Lv, the institute deputy director of QIBEBT and Profs Jian Xu and Bo Ma from the Single-Cell Center gave a warm reception to the guests.

During the visit, the two sides officially launched the “Sino-German Laboratory for Algal Bioenergy” (Sigal4NRG), which was a five-year program funded by the German federal government. At its first academic committee meeting, the partners of Sigal4NRG reviewed their fruitful collaboration, and planned for additional collaborations in areas such as microalgal synthetic biology, microalgal genome engineering and Raman-activated single cell sorting.

Representatives of RUB and QIBEBT signed a formal cooperation agreement for Sigal4NRG. Sigal4NRG will combine German side's expertise in Chlamydomonas photosynthesis, proteomics, and image processing and Chinese side’s strength in Nannochloropsis metabolism engineering, Ramanome and single-cell analysis instrument development, and together develop synthetic biology solutions for solving the key bottlenecks in feedstock development for the microalgal bioenergy industry.

(Text by DING Xiaoyang)