Microalgal Enzymes with Biotechnological Applications

Abstract

Enzymes are essential components of biological reactions and play important roles in the scaling and optimization of many industrial processes. Due to the growing commercial demand for new and more efficient enzymes to help further optimize these processes, many studies are now focusing their attention on more renewable and environmentally sustainable sources for the production of these enzymes. Microalgae are very promising from this perspective since they can be cultivated in photobioreactors, allowing the production of high biomass levels in a cost-efficient manner. This is reflected in the increased number of publications in this area, especially in the use of microalgae as a source of novel enzymes. In particular, various microalgal enzymes with different industrial applications (e.g., lipids and biofuel production, healthcare, and bioremediation) have been studied to date, and the modification of enzymatic sequences involved in lipid and carotenoid production has resulted in promising results. However, the entire biosynthetic pathways/systems leading to synthesis of potentially important bioactive compounds have in many cases yet to be fully characterized (e.g., for the synthesis of polyketides). Nonetheless, with recent advances in microalgal genomics and transcriptomic approaches, it is becoming easier to identify sequences encoding targeted enzymes, increasing the likelihood of the identification, heterologous expression, and characterization of these enzymes of interest. This review provides an overview of the state of the art in marine and freshwater microalgal enzymes with potential biotechnological applications and provides future perspectives for this field.

Marine-Derived Polymeric Materials and Biomimetics: An Overview

“…Thanks to recent progress in metabolomics, biocatalysts are not only extractable directly from marine organisms but may also be produced through heterologous expression in marine hosts, such as cyanobacteria or microalgae, that are cultivatable for industrial applications [71][72][73]. In this review, we will focus on marine biocatalysts as tools used for the extraction of marine molecules and post-extraction molecular modification.…”

Protein Recovery from Underutilised Marine Bioresources for Product Development with Nutraceutical and Pharmaceutical Bioactivities

“…A large quantity of different enzyme classes, such as hydrolases, oxidoreductases, and lyases involved in light harvesting, carboxylation, glycolate-metabolism and protection from reactive oxygen species [140], such as cellulases, galactosidases, proteases, lipases, phytases, laccases, amylases, and antioxidant enzymes, among many others have been identified in microalgae [141]. The above mentioned significant advantages of microalgal production combined with demonstrated nutraceutical and pharmaceutical bioactive compounds and enzymes renders this biomass as a promising resource for commercial production of proteins and enzymes [142][143][144][145].…”

“…They can efficiently catalyse numerous biochemical reactions in production of many commercial products such as detergents, food, flavours, agrochemicals, cosmetics, and pharmaceuticals or are capable to prevent and treat certain diseases as direct drugs [113,320,321]. Therefore, the global demand for enzymes is constantly increasing and predicted to surpass USD10 billion by 2024 [145]. Marine biomass, including SPBs and microalgae, has been identified as vital sources of different enzymes for various applications [141,322].…”

“…Production of nutraceuticals such as the long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) omega-3, such as DHA, and EPA can be achieved with lipases recovered from SPBs and microalgae. Enzymes derived from these sources can also be used for the biosynthesis of biopeptides [325] and other active compounds, including polyketides, carotenoids or oxylipins [145]. Particularly, the enzyme L-asparaginase, present in various microalgae species [326,327], can be used for the treatment of acute lymphoblastic leukaemia, acute myeloid leukaemia, and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma [328].…”

De novo Transcriptome of the Non-saxitoxin Producing Alexandrium tamutum Reveals New Insights on Harmful Dinoflagellates

“…PKS genes have been identified in several microalgae (e.g., Azadinium spinosum, Gambierdiscus spp., Amphidinium carterae, Tetraselmis suecica [95,[102][103][104]), while metabolites theorized to derive from hybrid NRPS/PKS gene clusters have been reported in Karenia brevis [105]. The wide range of suggested enzymatic reactions and possible natural products that may be produced, make these microalgal species interesting targets for future studies with biotechnological applications [106].…”