Abstract
The rapid growth of science and technology resulted in an increase in the
production and utilization of chemical-based value-added compounds. Due to the
involvement of greenhouse gases and global warming, there is a shift towards
alternative strategies to replace chemical-based value-added products. Primary and
secondary metabolites produced by various microorganisms could be an effective and
environmentally friendly alternative to chemically manufactured value-added products.
Metabolites produced from various fungal strains (filamentous fungi and yeast) are of
high importance for their widespread applications in the food, agriculture, and
pharmaceutical sectors. These value-added bioproducts include biofuel (bioethanol),
organic acids (citric acid, lactic acid, succinic acid, and cis, cis-muconic acid),
hydrolytic enzymes (cellulases, xylanase, phytase, lipase, ligninolytic enzymes, and
proteases), vitamins, amino acids, antibiotics, drug molecules, and other industrialrelevant
chemicals. Advances in industrial microbiology and biotechnology by
metabolic engineering, protein engineering, systems biology, and synthetic biology led
to the analysis and discovery of novel metabolic pathways and successive heterologous
expression of metabolites of commercial importance. This chapter highlights the
biotechnological production of a few relevant primary and secondary metabolites by
both filamentous and unicellular fungi.
Keywords: Bioactive compounds, Biofuels, Fungi, Hydrolytic enzymes, Organic acids, Primary metabolites, Secondary metabolites, White biotechnology, Yeast.
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