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[Photo from Culture Collection of Algae and Protozoa – Scotland, United Kingdom]
Chlorella vulgaris (AlgaeBase) is a green eukaryotic microalga in the genus Chlorella, which has been present on earth since the Precambrian period. This unicellular alga was discovered in 1890 by Martinus Willem Beijerinck as the first microalga with a well-defined nucleus. At the beginning of the 1990s, German scientists noticed the high protein content of C. vulgaris and began to consider it as a new food source. Japan is currently the largest consumer of Chlorella, both for nutritional and therapeutic purposes.
C. vulgaris is seen as a promising source of bioenergy, and may be a good alternative to biofuel crops, like soybean, corn or rapeseed, as it is more productive and does not compete with food production. It can produce large amounts of lipids, up to 20 times more than crops that have a suitable profile for biodiesel production. C. vulgaris also contains high amounts of starch, good for the production of bioethanol. However, microalgal biofuels are far from competitive with fossil fuels, given their high production costs and controversial sustainability. [From Wikipedia]
The experimental samples used for this species can be found in Data S2 of our supplementary data.