Algal Phenomics Facility

The UTS Algal Phenomics Facility is a world-class facility to provide research integrated capability focusing on phenomics solutions to the biotech, agriculture and environmental sectors.

The phenomics facility is a unique set of instruments that we've put together over a number of years in a way that has not been done before. The phenomics facility was designed to record and characterize a lot of properties in microalgae in an automated way.

It's allowing us to access information from the natural environment all for research and development applications in ways that were not possible because of time and scale. So traditionally you would have a person working with one microalgae and working months or even years to characterize that particular strain

what this facility allows us to do now is take 5000 strains and characterize all of them within seven days and then go to the next 5000.

Industry partners could work with us, especially when they have microalgae that they grow for producing biomass or biomolecules. We can actually take that microorganism that they already have and improve it. We can actually use directed evolution in a high throughput way and actually find and improve that microalgae to grow in better environments to produce more of the molecule and the best part of it, is we can do it really quickly. We can do the work that would take years within weeks simply because of the number of samples we can process in a short amount of time.

The UTS Algal Phenomics Facility (APF) is Australia’s and the world-first phenomics facility designed for high throughput screening of algal strains, mutants and transformants in a dynamic environment. Find out more about the facility.

What do we offer?

We offer Industry and Research focused applications.

Industry focused applications

Optimization of growth conditions for maximum biomass production.
Optimization of growth conditions for production of a specific compound.
Evaluation of breeding, assisted evolution or hybridization to yield elite traits.

Research focused applications

Changes in phenome in response to different environmental conditions
Ramanome analysis
Metabolome analysis
Fluorome analysis
Trait characterisation of a mutant strain

Capabilities

Automation integrated instruments

Robotic system (PSI/Omron)
Algal growth chamber (PSI)
Liquid handling robot (Opentrons)
Custom designed FluorCAM fluorometer (PSI)
Cell culture plate centrifuge (Agilent)
Hyperspec optical analysis unit (PSI)
Flow Cytometer (Beckman Cytoflex LX)

Stand-alone instruments

DNA/RNA extraction robot (Qiagen QIAcube HT)
QTof/Tof LCMS (Waters Xevo G2-XS)
Open (and Closed) FluorCAM fluorometer (PSI)
DXR™3 SmartRaman Spectrometer (Thermo Fisher Scientific)
Cell culture plate reader (Tecan Spark)
3L photobioreactor with turbidostat, CO2 control; with florometer, optical density, pH, temperature and CO2 sensors (PSI)
Multispectral multicultivator MC MIX (PSI)
Stackable incubators with CO2 control (Eppendorf Innova® S44i)