Biotechnological and bioinformatics approaches for augmentation of biohydrogen production: A review

Biohydrogen production (BHP) from biomass is a characteristic feature of prokaryotes and is considered to be a vital source of renewable energy. It is considered as the cleanest fuel with no emanation of greenhouse gases on ignition. The major biological processes for hydrogen (H2) production are: biophotolysis of water by algae and cyanobacteria, dark fermentation and photo-fermentation. For the past fifty years, lot of work has been carried out for understanding and improving BHP and still it has to overcome some of the serious limitations so that it becomes viable proposition. The bottlenecks include thermodynamic inefficiency, difficulty in using lignocellulosics as feed material, raw material cost and lower hydrogen yield. To overcome these major problems, the conventional approach is not enough and one has to vigorously think modern bioinformatics approaches to conquer them. The accessibility of huge sequenced genomes, functional genomics studies, the development of in silico models at the genome scale, metabolic pathway reconstruction, and synthetic biology approach predicts engineering strategies to enhance H2 production in an organism. This review investigates the recent status and advancements that have been made in the area of biotechnology and bioinformatics, to understand and enhance the H2 generation to overcome current limitations and make biohydrogen, a reality in near future.