Table 2A.
Metabolic engineering approaches for enhanced fatty acid biosynthesis in microalgae.
| Target enzyme/protein | Gene source/gene modification technique | Receiver species | Findings | Reference |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Acetyl-CoA carboxylase (ACCase) | Endogenous | Cyclotella cryptic | No increase in overall lipid accumulation | Dunahay et al., 1996 |
| Fatty acid-ACP thioesterase (FATE) | Endogenous | Chlamydomonas reinhardtii | Shorter chain length free fatty acids | Blatti et al., 2012 |
| Pyruvate dehydrogenase kinase (PDH-K) | Antisense c-DNA modifications | Phaeodactylum tricornutum | Eighty-two percentage increase in neutral lipid content | Ma et al., 2014 |
| One lipogenesis transcription factor | Soybean seed | Chlorella ellipsoidea | Fifty-two percentage increase in total lipid content | Zhang et al., 2014 |
| Malic enzyme (ME) | Putative malic enzyme gene (GenBank accession: XM-002180295.1) | Phaeodactylum tricornutum | Lipid content increased by 2.5-folds and reached a record 57.8% of dry cell weight | Xue et al., 2015 |