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Omics technologies for microalgae-based fuels and chemicals; challenges and opportunities.

Author
Abstract
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Microalgae have been appeared 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 infancy due to the dearth of the knowledge regarding state-of-the-art sophisticated technologies. Inarguably, over the past several years, biological sciences have witnessed an explosion of innovative strategies enabling 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. The relative advantages and drawbacks of these technologies can be debated; 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. 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.

Year of Publication
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2018
Journal
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Protein and peptide letters
Date Published
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2018
ISSN Number
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0929-8665
DOI
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10.2174/0929866525666180122100722
Short Title
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Protein Pept Lett
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