Chlorella ohadii is a eukaryotic green alga plant isolated from the biological soil crusts of the Negev desert, Israel. It has the fastest growth rate reported thus far for any eukaryotic alga, exhibiting robust metabolic performance including very fast carbon fluxes through main photosynthetic pathways and metabolic flexibility between mixotrophic, autotrophic and heterotrophic growth. C. ohadii is also fully resistant to extreme illumination levels owing on its remarkably robust PSII and protective carotenoids accumulation, alongside higher PSI electron transfer rates, increased metabolic capacity supporting rapid poising of redox status, rapid post-translational redox regulation of protein kinases and Reactive-Oxygen-Species and Heat-Shock responses and novel thylakoid remodeling. This provides C. ohadii with the resilience required to survive the adversity of the desert sand crusts. Because of all these features, C. ohadii is an excellent model to study growth, metabolism and stress response mechanisms in photosynthetic cells.
C. ohadii is part of the Chlorella genus and is closely related to, and may have evolved from, C. sorokiniana, sharing far more genes with strains of this species than with other Chlorella species, and specifically related in terms of gene content to the strain UTEX1663.
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