Omics Technologies for Microalgae-based Fuels and Chemicals: Challenges and Opportunities

Background: Microalgae have been suggested as promising feedstocks of significant biotechnological interest due to their enormous potential for the sustainable production of industrially valuable compounds such as lipids/fatty acids, proteins, metabolites, pigments, and biofuels. However, exploitation of algal biomass for commercial purposes is still in its infancy due to the dearth of the knowledge regarding state-of-the-art sophisticated technologies.

Objectives: The main objective of the study was to review the explosions of innovative strategies that biological sciences have witnessed over the past several years, enabling the scientific community and research-based organizations to scrutinize entire classes of biomolecules from a cell type or whole organism, collectively titled as 'Omics, including genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics and lipidomics.

Methods: An effort has been made to analyze the relative advantages and drawbacks of these technologies by reviewing and consulting the available literature.

Results: Nevertheless, these 'Omics strategies have played a key role in the better understanding of the underlying mechanisms of specific gene products, regulatory constraints, metabolic pathways and potential genes and protein targets which might be employed in tailoring microalgae for enhanced productivity. In this critical review, an understanding of recent omics technologies, their potential applications, and limitations for microalgae-based fuel and other commodity chemicals are comprehensively discussed.

Conclusion: In the scenario of uncertain petro-based reserves, global warming and energy insecurity, the exploration of metabolic potentialities of microalgae using “Omics” are believed to be a green and environmentally-responsive approach that will further expand its industrial and environmental scope.