Biological Challenges and Research Trends in Algae Biofuels

The research in phycology over the past few decades has helped in realising the algal potential for serving as a biofuel. The main hurdle in its fullest realisation is the need to overcome biological problems. This paper discusses the research solutions that are being largely pursued to those which are still in their preliminary stage. The most important biological challenges that are under research limelight are increasing the photosynthetic efficiency, optimising the algal growth rates and increasing the lipid content in algae. The research in these challenges garners application of a diverse set of disciplines. Genetic and biochemical solutions being the most sought after techniques, methods as novel as plasmonics and nano-biotechnology are also being applied in the developmental research. An overview of different methods being applied in overcoming these biological challenges is presented in this paper.