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As a major primary producer in marine environments, diatoms have been considered as promising feedstocks for their applications in functional foods, bioactive pharmaceuticals, and cosmetics. This review focuses on the biotechnology potential of diatoms for value-added products like carotenoids. The impact of abiotic environmental stresses, such as intensity and quality of incident light, nutrient deficiency and silicon depletion, on diatoms has been examined to determine key factors that affect the growth performance and the accumulation of valuable compounds. Previous studies suggested that adaptive evolution could be an efficient method to improve the diatom productivity of valuable compounds. Light emitting diode (LED)-based photobioreactors were introduced and proposed as a promising new technology for producing quality products from diatoms. Currently available molecular biology tools were also summarized and discussed in relation to their application in the production of carotenoids and other valuable products. Taken together, systems biology and synthetic biology approaches have the potential to address the challenges faced while working toward the industrial application of diatoms., (Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

We recently evaluated the relationship between abiotic environmental stresses and lutein biosynthesis in the green microalga Dunaliella salina and suggested a rational design of stress-driven adaptive evolution experiments for carotenoids production in microalgae. Here, we summarize our recent findings regarding the biotechnological production of carotenoids from microalgae and outline emerging technology in this field. Carotenoid metabolic pathways are characterized in several representative algal species as they pave the way for biotechnology development. The adaptive evolution strategy is highlighted in connection with enhanced growth rate and carotenoid metabolism. In addition, available genetic modification tools are described, with emphasis on model species. A brief discussion on the role of lights as limiting factors in carotenoid production in microalgae is also included. Overall, our analysis suggests that light-driven metabolism and the photosynthetic efficiency of microalgae in photobioreactors are the main bottlenecks in enhancing biotechnological potential of carotenoid production from microalgae.

There is a particularly high interest to derive carotenoids such as β-carotene and lutein from higher plants and algae for the global market. It is well known that β-carotene can be overproduced in the green microalga Dunaliella salina in response to stressful light conditions. However, little is known about the effects of light quality on carotenoid metabolism, e.g., narrow spectrum red light. In this study, we present UPLC-UV-MS data from D. salina consistent with the pathway proposed for carotenoid metabolism in the green microalga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii. We have studied the effect of red light-emitting diode (LED) lighting on growth rate and biomass yield and identified the optimal photon flux for D. salina growth. We found that the major carotenoids changed in parallel to the chlorophyll b content and that red light photon stress alone at high level was not capable of upregulating carotenoid accumulation presumably due to serious photodamage. We have found that combining red LED (75 %) with blue LED (25 %) allowed growth at a higher total photon flux. Additional blue light instead of red light led to increased β-carotene and lutein accumulation, and the application of long-term iterative stress (adaptive laboratory evolution) yielded strains of D. salina with increased accumulation of carotenoids under combined blue and red light.