The biodiversity of oleaginous microalgae in Northern Qinghai-Tibet Plateau

Microalgae represent an exceptionally diverse but highly specialized group of micro-organisms that adapt to various ecological habitats. Due to their unique environment (extremely low temperature and anoxia), the Tibetan Plateau is among the regions with numerous rare ecotypes such as arid desert, salt marsh, alpine permafrost, hot spring and lawn. In this study, 52 microalgae from different environments in Qinghai-Tibet Plateau were isolated and divided into 11 different groups based on the results of restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP). Then, 2-3 strains of each group were selected for 18s rDNA molecular identification. The oil contents among the studied strains varied from 3.26 to 25.47%. The results indicate that the number and high lipid content of the strains isolated from the water were much more than those from the soil. This provides a direction for the isolation of high oleaginous microalgae.   Key words: Northern Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, microalgae, lipids, restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP), 18s rDNA.