REVIEW article
Front. Plant Sci.
Sec. Plant Metabolism and Chemodiversity
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpls.2025.1616863
Exploiting microalgal diversity for sterol production
Provisionally accepted
- Department of Bioprocess Engineering, Wageningen University and Research, Wageningen, Netherlands
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Sterols are essential for eukaryotic cell membrane integrity and fluidity, and they demonstrate valuable pharmaceutical and nutraceutical benefits, including anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, anti-cancer, and cholesterollowering properties. Traditionally, animal, plant, and microbial fermentation sterols face sustainability, economic, and ethical challenges. Microalgae have emerged as a promising alternative due to their biochemical diversity, rapid growth, and controlled cultivation capabilities. This review explores microalgae's potential for sterol production, highlighting their advantages, including sustainability and sterol profile diversity, while addressing key challenges of low sterol yields, species-dependent variations, and industrial scalability. We discuss how recent advancements in metabolic engineering, cultivation technologies, and process optimization could enhance sterol production. By integrating innovative biotechnological strategies, microalgae hold the potential to become a viable and sustainable sterol source for pharmaceutical, nutraceutical, and industrial applications.
Keywords: Microalgae, Sterols production, Environmental conditions, Genetic Engineering, Biotechnological application
Received: 23 Apr 2025; Accepted: 22 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Abdelkarim, Wijffels and Barbosa. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Omnia H. Abdelkarim, Department of Bioprocess Engineering, Wageningen University and Research, Wageningen, 6700 AA, Netherlands
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.