Molecular and Biochemical Mechanisms Elucidating Growth and Cellular Stress Responses of Microalgae

Dear Colleagues,

Microalgae are the green factories for producing array of valuable commodities having prospective applications in environment protection, energy generation, and nutrition for human health. These miniscule inventories of natural systems hold immense potential to be tailored with implementation of well-designed and established technical interventions to achieve the goals of sustainable and circular economy. Bioprospecting the natural/ engineered strains and understanding the cellular and subcellular reorganization to study the behavior, physiology, and biochemical/molecular mechanism in algal cells against different stressors is of prime interest in the area of algal biotechnology. The microalgae mount resistance/adaptation to different conditions by undergoing changes in their cell wall, cell membrane, carbon flux allocation/channelization etc., by initiating multitudinous response and by rewiring the signaling pathways to maintain the cellular homeostasis and growth. In-depth biochemical and molecular analysis of such downstream responses inside the algal cell is quintessential to discover secretive pathways, and to conduct target-based research that can be translated further to commercial industries in the form of cost-effective renewable energies, environmental remediation, and nutritive solutions to human health, thereby boosting the global economy. Essentially, the behavioral pattern of robust algal strains to tolerate multiple stressors at the same time, mimicking the real scenario to address sustainable biorefinery framework is need of the hour.

With the vision to a step towards algal based sustainable future, the special issue intends to attract novel research, review, and state-of-the art articles highlighting the aspects of cell growth, physiology, biochemical/molecular mechanisms in microalgae to counteract the different stress conditions. The studies providing the mechanistic insights and dynamics of intracellular photosynthetic, cell wall and carbon concentration machinery of microalgae under various stressors are essentially welcome.

The potential topics for the reviews, research, and state of art articles in this special issue include the following but not limited to:

• Growth mechanisms of microalgae while producing various bioproducts under growth simulators environmental conditions;
• Cellular stress responses under heavy metals/metalloids, organic pollutants, micro/nano plastics, nutrient limitations etc.;
• Molecular mechanisms of microalgal cell responses using Omics technologies comprising of genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics, lipidomics and glycomics.

Dr. Krishna Mohan Poluri
Dr. Damar Lizbeth López-Arredondo
Guest Editors

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• microalgal physiology
• cellular stress
• organic pollutants
• inorganic pollutants
• nano & micro plastics
• nutrient limitations
• growth promotors
• carbon fixation
• carbon flux channelization
• bioenergy and bioproducts
• biorefinery
• molecular mechanisms
• omics technologies