微藻代谢工程改造研究进展及展望

Metabolic engineering of microalgae:a review and future prospects

微藻种类繁多,分布广泛,很多微藻能通过自身代谢生产油脂、色素、多糖等高价值产品.但通常情况下,微藻生产高价值产品时存在产物含量低以及细胞采收成本高等缺点,限制了微藻产品的实际应用.为了有效开发利用微藻资源,研究如何利用遗传改造技术选育藻株,提高其代谢物含量,并改善微藻采收效率十分重要.近年来,利用代谢工程改造微藻取得了显著进展,此外,微藻基因组编辑及合成生物学研究也不断深入,这些遗传改造技术的不断进步和创新,必将提高微藻重要代谢物的生产效率,以满足人类不断增长的能源、食品和制药工业需求.

Microalgae are widely distributed in nature, which can produce lipids, pigments, polysaccharides, as well as other high-value products through cell metabolism. However, low product content and high cost of cell harvesting negatively impact the practical application of microalgae. To utilize microalgal resources more effectively, it is necessary to modify the microalgae strains with genetic modification technologies for producing specific metabolites efficiently. Genome editing, metabolic engineering and synthetic biology tools are being developed for accelerating the production of important metabolites to meet the growing demands of energy, food and pharmaceutical industries using microalgae. The recent progress of related studies is summarize in this review, with future prospects provided.