 To date, he has published more than 240 refereed research papers, and book articles, edited several books, among them the "Handbook of Protoctista" (1990), and wrote books in German ranging from "General Botany" (1974, 1984) to an "Illustrated Guide to Freshwater Algae" (2004, 2012).Melkonian holds 15 patents and is Co-Founder of Algenion GmbH & Co. KG, an algal biotec company.Melkonian studied the structure, function and development of the flagellar apparatus in algae and co-discovered several centrosomal proteins novel for eukaryotes (e.g.