Chapter 14 - Cyanobacteria-based microbial cell factories for production of industrial products

Abstract

Cyanobacteria are microscopic microorganisms, unicellular or multicellular oxygenic photoautotrophs, and Gram-negative prokaryotes, widespread in terrestrial or aquatic environment and mostly occur in fresh water and marine environment. They have greatest diversity and morphology among all prokaryotes. They are the principal producers of biomass in the world and produce a huge number of natural bioactive products including indoles, toxins, amides, macrolides, lipopeptides, fatty acids, polyketides, amino acids and alkaloids, bioplastics, coloring dyes, enzymes, and many drugs. So, they showed great potential applications in remediation and production of biodiesel, biohydrogen, and bioplastic. They are also used in the synthesis of various nanoparticles such as silver, gold, lead, platinum, and zinc oxide. Cyanobacteria are used as source of natural pigment that can be benefits in many industries such as chlorophyll a uses in manufacture of pharmaceutical and cosmetics, Phycobiliproteins use in manufacture of immunofluorescence techniques, antibody labeling food colorant (ice cream and sweets), cosmetics, immunofluorescence techniques; antibody labeling, carotenoids use in manufacture of antioxidant, anticancer, antiobesity, antiproliferative activity, antiproliferative, and antiinflammatory. This chapter focuses on the advantages of cyanobacteria in many application processes.