ABSTRACT
In recent decades, the bioprospecting of valuable metabolites from microalgae, especially lipid, has gained massive attention as the primary solution to overcome the problems associated with the unprecedented consumption of global fossil fuel reserves. Many microalgal species can be convinced to accumulate substantial quantities of lipids, mostly greater than 60% of their biomass. The manipulation in cultivation conditions and nutrient stress are widely used techniques for lipid enhancement. Scalability is the main challenge of applying such conventional approaches since certain of these strategies involve additional costs and energy. Recently, modern strategies have been widely used to address these challenges to improve the accumulation of microalgal lipids. The advanced approaches are combined abiotic stress, co-cultivation, two-stage cultivation, molecular and genetic engineering techniques for expressing foreign gene to alter the biosynthetic pathway for lipid accumulation in microalgae, application of enzyme acetyl-CoA carboxylase – which catalyzes an important metabolic step in the synthesis of lipids in algae – and the use of nanoparticles, phytohormone supplement and chemical additives. The current chapter provides a comprehensive discussion of different approaches that induce microalgae to produce lipids with enhanced recovery.
