摘要：

Pigments that produce microorganisms and microalgae are quite common in nature. However, there is a long way from the Petri dish to the market place. Ten years ago, scientists wondered if such productions would be scientific oddity or industrial reality. The answer is dual, as processes using fungi, bacteria, or microalgae already provide carotenoids or phycocyanin at an industrial level. Another production is peculiar as Monascus red-color food is consumed by more than 1 billion Asian people; however, it is still banned in many other countries. European and American consumers will follow as soon as toxin-free strains have been developed. For other pigmented biomolecules, some laboratories and companies invest a lot of money as any combination of a new source and/ or new pigment requires a lot of experimental work, process optimization, toxicological studies, and regulatory approval. Time will tell whether investments in pigments, such as azaphilones or anthraquinones, were justified. Future trends involve combinatorial engineering, gene knockout, and the production of niche pigments not found in plants, such as C50 carotenoids (Furubayashi, M., Ikezumi, M., Takaichi, S., Maoka, T., Hemmi, H., Ogawa, T., Saito, K., Tobias, A.V., Umeno, D., 2015. A highly selective biosynthetic pathway to non-natural C50 carotenoids assembled from moderately selective enzymes. Nat. Commun. 6, 7534; Heider et al., 2014) or aryl carotenoids.

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