Abstract
Elucidation of metabolic pathway in phytoplankton is essential to understand global carbon cycle and environmental change. Haptophytes plays very important role in marine ecosystems. Coccolithophorid Emiliania huxleyi produces long-chain ketones named alkenones. The unsaturation index of alkenones is used as the Paleothermometer which is used as parameter of changes in oceanic temperature. Alkenones are structurally very different from storage lipid such as triglyceride and their biosynthetic pathway is still unknown. We recently succeeded to identify the intermediates of alkenone biosynthesis using algal lipidomics. In this talk, we will focus on our recent finding on the regulatory mechanism of biosynthesis of such important biomarker in geochemistry.
