Chapter 8: Genetic Engineering of Microalgae for Non-fuel, High-value Biochemicals of Industrial Significance
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Published:12 Dec 2022
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Special Collection: 2022 ebook collection
E. Eltanahy and B. Shehatta, in Microalgae for Sustainable Products: The Green Synthetic Biology Platform, ed. A. Shekh and S. Dasgupta, The Royal Society of Chemistry, 2022, ch. 8, pp. 155-177.
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Microalgae are a vast group of photosynthetic autotrophs with more than ten phyla and hundreds of promising strains growing in almost all habitats. They have unique characteristics that make them of great importance in biotechnology and in the commercial production of valuable bioactive compounds. With the development and multiplicity of genetic engineering techniques in the current biotechnology era, scientists have started to use many techniques to create transformed strains. These transformation techniques are silicon carbide mediated transformation, electroporation, microparticle bombardment, agrobacterium-mediated transformation, bacterial conjugation, and enzyme-mediated transformation. Through genetic modification, the cells acquire new traits to improve the production efficiency or produce a new substance that was not originally present in the cell's metabolic pathways, such as long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids, carotenoids, proteins, antibiotics, antibodies, and even vaccines for many diseases such as coronavirus (covid-19). In this chapter, all these topics are discussed in detail.