Zhao Xinqing

Metabolic engineering of microalgae: a review and future prospects

Microalgae are widely distributed in nature, which can produce lipids, pigments, polysaccharides, as well as other high-value products through cell metabolism. However, low product content and high cost of cell harvesting negatively impact the practical application of microalgae. To utilize microalgal resources more effectively, it is necessary to modify the microalgae strains with genetic modification technologies for producing specific metabolites efficiently. Genome editing, metabolic engineering and synthetic biology tools are being developed for accelerating the production of important metabolites to meet the growing demands of energy, food and pharmaceutical industries using microalgae. The recent progress of related studies is summarize in this review, with future prospects provided.