Abstract
AbstractIn the wake of an increase in nutritional problems along with depletion of fossil fuel resources and environmental problems, microalgal biorefineries emerged as an alternative feedstock for biofuels and other valuable coproducts. Microalgae is now crowned as efficient cell factories, having great potential in producing a variety of therapeutically active compounds/biomolecules including astaxanthin, lutein, canthaxanthin, docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA), etc. Presently, microalgal biorefineries are not well established due to their high cultivation cost and low yield. To conquer this scenario, metabolic and genetic engineering techniques were widely applied. Modification of metabolic pathways by gene silencing or overexpressing to increase the accumulation of desired products is a widespread practice in metabolic engineering, while, in genetic engineering, strategies like RNA interference (RNAi), Zinc-finger proteins (ZNFs), Transcription activator-like effector nucleases (TALENs), and Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats CRISPR/CRISPR-associated protein 9 (CRISPR/Cas9) are used to intensify the quantity and quality of a targeted biomolecule. These transgenic microalgae help to reduce the techno-economic constraints related to the commercialization of microalgae biorefineries.KeywordsBiorefineriesBiofuelAstaxanthinGenetic engineeringMetabolic engineering
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