Effect of metabolic inhibitors on growth and carotenoid production in Dunaliella bardawil.

Dunaliella bardawil, a green alga accumulates
high amount of β-carotene under stress conditions. This
organism has been exploited for β-carotene at industrial
scale. In the present work, various metabolic inhibitors like
diphenylamine (DPA), nicotine, basta, glyphosate, DCMU
[3–(3′,4′-dichlophenyl)-1,1-dimethylurea] and caffeine were
used in autotrophic medium, to understand their influence
on carotenoid biosynthesis. The results indicated that these
metabolic inhibitors influenced the production of carotenoids
like wise, DPA and basta increased the contents of β-
carotene (1.7 fold), glyphosate and DCMU for lutein (2.4
and 2 fold) caffeine for biomass yields (1.1 fold), while
nicotine decreased the biomass yield (3.6 fold), β-carotene
(2 fold) and lutein (10.5 fold).