Construction of cell-plastics as neo-plastics consisted of cell-layer provided green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii covered by two-dimensional polymer

Green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii has gained interest as a sustainable resource because it can be easily grown using CO(2) as a carbon source owing to its high CO(2) assimilating activity. Although the robustness of the cell wall of C. reinhardtii makes it difficult to extract its intracellular products, such property is beneficial when using the cell as an ingredient to fabricate “cell-plastic” in this study. The cell layer, which is a component of the cell-plastic, was prepared with an intercellular filler to connect each cell because C. reinhardtii is a single-cell strain. The cell layers were then repeatedly piled to increase the strength of the cell-plastic. To avoid slippage between the cell layers, they were covered with a small amount of a two-dimensional polymer to maintain the flat surface structure of the cell-plastic. Based on the evaluation, the cell-plastic has the potential to be a novel, sustainable plastic using ubiquitous green algal cells in nature. [Image: see text]