Microalgal Metabolomes and Recent Biotechnological Advances for Their Industrial Application

In recent decades, microalgae have emerged as new sustainable resources for the production of various bioactive and biochemical compounds. These organisms are photosynthetic, use CO2 as their sole carbon source, and grow rapidly under different environmental conditions. This makes microalgae a promising source of feedstock for many bio-commodities. However, the economic viability for large-scale production through microalgal cells is limited to certain organisms. Recent advances in omics technologies, along with high-throughput approaches, have provided new insights for understanding microalgal metabolites. With the improvement in metabolomic technology, sensitivity for the detection of cellular metabolites has increased, and it has directly enhanced our understanding of cellular metabolism and the corresponding metabolic pathways. Moreover, these metabolic techniques, along with other omics technologies, help us to characterize the changes in the cellular functioning of the different cells under environmental conditions. Metabolomic research on microalgae explores new metabolites and the understanding of their biosynthesis at the metabolic level. In this review, we discuss how these metabolomics techniques are applied to microalgae to study their metabolic networks. Additionally, we also discuss how integrating other tools of systems biology can improve the productivity of microalgal cells, especially for industrially important commodities.