Genetic engineering of plants and microalgae is at the core of environmental conservation: sustainability efforts, renewable energy resources, and agricultural engineering. The predominant bottleneck facing efficient genetic transformation is biomolecule delivery into specific cells through the rigid and multi-layered cell wall. Few delivery tools exist that can transfer biomolecules into these cells, each with considerable drawbacks that either limit the range of transformable species (Agrobacterium) or exhibit incredibly low transformation efficiencies (biolistics). Because of this lack of tools, only four complete biosynthetic pathways are known for plant natural products that have been successfully reconstituted heterologously and none in microalgae (in contrast to the hundreds of biosynthetic pathways for bacteria and fungi). The primary objective of this proposal is to enable the establishment of new collaborative initiatives with the potential for creating permanent ties between the Landry Lab at UC Berkeley and the Lozoya Lab at the CINVESTAV-IPN Irapuato Unit to explore the possibilities of research on plants and microalgae using new methods of genetic modification. Landry’s lab has discovered that high aspect ratio nanoparticles single walled carbon nanotubes (SWNT), can be functionalized to selectively bind and transport biological cargo such as DNA and RNA into mature plant cells. We hypothesize that our collaboration will enable nanoparticle-based transformation of Chlamydomonas reinhardtii (Chr), a single-cell green alga of interest for producing biopharmaceuticals and biofuel and a valuable research tool for making hydrogen, but a species that is recalcitrant to genetic transformation.  We anticipate that our collaboration will enable facile genetic transformation of Chr to engineer microalgae to efficiently clean sewage waters and to produce biofuels to decrease the use of fossil fuels.