Microalgae show a range of responses to exometabolites of foreign species

Tolerance to allelopathic inhibition by free fatty acids in five biofuel candidate microalgae strains

“…Although our study and several others clearly show that FFAs significantly impact algal productivity, there are many additional compounds that may inhibit or stimulate algal growth, as algal exometabolomes can be comprised of hundreds of unique chemical features (Becker et al, 2014;Brisson et al, 2021). For example, recent work shows that diverse exometabolites including prostaglandins, aldehydes, dodecanedioic acid, L-histidinal, tiliacorine, dimethylsulfoniopropionate (DMSP), and others can also play important roles in allelopathy among phytoplankton (Apostolopoulou et al, 2022;Brisson et al, 2021). Algae can also produce and excrete phytohormones like indole-3acetic acid, which may stimulate growth of other species (Liu et al, 2016;Mazur et al, 2001) The high dimensionality of algal chemical exudates therefore poses a potential challenge; however, the richness of exometabolites we can extract from algae cultures also presents a substantial opportunity for industrial utilization (Liu et al, 2016).…”