It should be underlined that, while crop plants are routinely cultivated
in large areas, algae are cultivated in photobioreactors or ponds
which have high energetic and monetary cost for building and maintenance.
Therefore any increase in the area occupied by the alga
cultivation makes the process less sustainable from the energetic and
economic point of view. Therefore, a high photosynthetic efficiency is
indispensable for a viable algae large scale cultivation system, even
more than for crop plants. For this reason a deeper understanding
of the molecular bases of the light use efficiency for these organisms
is seminal to optimize their cultivation on a large scale and will be the
focus of the present work.