Natural pigments: recent advances and challenges in production and application

Natural pigments, derived from plants, animals, and microorganisms, offer numerous health benefits, including antioxidant, anticancer, and antimicrobial properties. Microbial sources, in particular, provide scalable, eco-friendly alternatives. However, production faces challenges such as low yield, high cultivation costs, and limited color diversity. Recent biotechnological advances-such as metabolic engineering, omics technologies, CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing, and synthetic biology-are addressing these hurdles by enhancing pigment biosynthesis and expanding pigment varieties. These innovations facilitate industrial-scale production while reducing environmental impact. Natural pigments now find applications in food, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, and textiles, often replacing synthetic dyes. Continued interdisciplinary research and industrial collaboration are essential to overcome production constraints and meet market demand. This review aims to provide a comprehensive and critical synthesis of natural pigments derived from plant, animal, and microbial sources, with a particular focus on recent advances in sustainable extraction technologies and biotechnological innovations such as metabolic engineering, CRISPR/Cas9, and synthetic biology. It systematically compares the advantages and limitations of pigments from different biological origins and evaluates their expanding applications in the food, pharmaceutical, nutraceutical, and biomedical sectors. Furthermore, the review identifies key challenges in scaling production and proposes future research directions to facilitate the transition from laboratory-scale discoveries to industrial applications.