Microalgal biofactories: a promising approach towards sustainable omega-3 fatty acid production

Microbial Cell Factories

Review

T Catalina Adarme-Vega¹  Peer M Schenk¹  David K Y Lim¹  Felicitas Vernen¹  Yan Li²  Matthew Timmins³ 

[1] Algae Biotechnology Laboratory, School of Agriculture and Food Sciences, The University of Queensland, QLD 4072, Brisbane, Australia;Algae Biotechnology Laboratory, School of Agriculture and Food Sciences, The University of Queensland, QLD 4072, Brisbane, Australia;Centre for Metabolomics, School of Chemistry and Biochemistry, The University of Western Australia M313, 35 Stirling Highway, 6009, Crawley, WA, Australia;Centre for Metabolomics, School of Chemistry and Biochemistry, The University of Western Australia M313, 35 Stirling Highway, 6009, Crawley, WA, Australia;

关键词: Docosahexaenoic acid;    DHA;    Eicosapentaenoic acid;    EPA;    Microalgae;    Omega-3 fatty acids;    Polyunsaturated fatty acids;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1475-2859-11-96

 received in 2012-04-25, accepted in 2012-07-06,  发布年份 2012

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

Omega-3 fatty acids eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) provide significant health benefits and this has led to an increased consumption as dietary supplements. Omega-3 fatty acids EPA and DHA are found in animals, transgenic plants, fungi and many microorganisms but are typically extracted from fatty fish, putting additional pressures on global fish stocks. As primary producers, many marine microalgae are rich in EPA (C20:5) and DHA (C22:6) and present a promising source of omega-3 fatty acids. Several heterotrophic microalgae have been used as biofactories for omega-3 fatty acids commercially, but a strong interest in autotrophic microalgae has emerged in recent years as microalgae are being developed as biofuel crops. This paper provides an overview of microalgal biotechnology and production platforms for the development of omega-3 fatty acids EPA and DHA. It refers to implications in current biotechnological uses of microalgae as aquaculture feed and future biofuel crops and explores potential applications of metabolic engineering and selective breeding to accumulate large amounts of omega-3 fatty acids in autotrophic microalgae.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Adarme-Vega et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2012. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.