Tetraselmis species for environmental sustainability: biology, water bioremediation, and biofuel production.

Abstract

With increasing demand of fossil fuels and water pollution and their environmental impacts, marine green microalgae have gained special attention in both scientific and industrial fields.This is due to their fast growth in non-arable lands with high photosynthetic activity, theirmetabolic plasticity, as well as theirhigh CO2 capture capacity. Tetraselmis species, green and eukaryotic microalgae, are not onlyconsidered as a valuable source of biomolecules including pigments, lipids, and starch but also widely used in biotechnological applications. Tetraselmis cultivation for high-value biomolecules and industrial use was demonstrated to be a non-cost-effective strategy because of its low demand in nutrients, such as phosphorus and nitrogen. Recently, phycoremediation of wastewater rich in nutrients, chemicals, and heavy metals has become an efficient and economic-alternative that allows the detoxification of waters and inducesmechanisms in algal cells for biomolecules rich-energy synthesis to regulate their metabolic pathways. This review aims to shed light on Tetraselmis species for their different culture conditions and metabolites bioaccumulation, as well as their human health and environmental applications. Additionally, phycoremediation of contaminants associated to biofuel production in Tetraselmis cells and their different intracellular and extracellular mechanismshave also been investigated.