Table 2.

Comparison between biomanufacturing of omega-3 fatty acids from various organisms.

	General information				Specific information
	Growth rate	Omega-3 content	Gene editing	Space-cost	Advantage	Disadvantage
Plants	Very low	High	Hard	Very high	Can accumulate substantial lipids. Great potential for omega-3 production post-gene-editing. Phototrophic organisms capable of recycling CO2 back into omega-3 production. Environmentally friendly and cost-effective process.	Grow very slowly. Require large lands, Competes with food. High extraction cost due to the production of omega-3 in seeds. Major bottleneck in the native metabolic pathway for further improving omega-3 production. Relatively hard to engineer the plants.
Microalgae	Low	High	Easy	High	Can natively produce omega-3 fatty acids. Can accumulate high levels of omega-3. Mature technologies are available to cultivate them effectively. Relatively easy to conduct gene editing. The unicellular structure facilitates easier extraction of omega-3 fatty acids.	Low cell density. A large area is required for omega-3 production by phototrophic process. Light is necessary for phototrophic microalgae, necessitating a well-designed bioreactor with a higher surface area to accept light.
Fungi	High	Very high	Easy	Low	Grow rapidly in bioreactors and achieve very high cell density Require less space for industrial production. Easy to conduct gene editing. Oleaginous fungi can store high levels of lipid bodies. Capable of high omega-3 fatty acids production inside cells.	Grow relatively slower than bacteria. Substantial amounts of omega-6 fatty acids as by-products in fungi may increase the cost of purification processing. Require a large amount of oxygen during fermentation processing. Relatively low yield of omega-3 from glucose.
Bacteria	Very high	Low	Easy	Low	Fastest growth rate among all organisms. Most mature gene editing technology is available. Do not require too much space for industrial manufacturing.	Have shallow omega-3 content inside the cells due to the absence of an organelle structure that can accumulate sufficient lipids for omega-3 fatty acid production.