Los isoprenoides como fuente de biocombustibles

The fossil fuels have negative effects on the environment thus in last years the concern about the supplies of petroleum has increased, therefore the implementation of renewable energies is a necessity, these energies also have to be economic and environment-friendly. The biofuels, are environment-friendly energy that can be obtained from renewable sources as corn, lignocellulose, citrus peel, or from the lipids of microorganism as cyanobacteria, genetically modified bacteria Escherichia coli and yeast as Yarrowia lipolytica and Rhodosporidium toruloides . Both yeasts have the capacity to accumulate 70% of lipid in dry biomass, unlike Y. lipolytica , the R. toruloides accumulate carotenoids, a kind of terpenoid with many applications in pharmaceutics and food industries. Moreover, this yeast has the ability to metabolize a variety of sugars as glucose, xylose, mannose, and sucrose, while the yeasts Y. lipolytic and Saccharomyces cerevisiae are unable to metabolize the pentose xylose. The R. toruloides also can tolerate variations in temperature and pH reason why is one of the yeast more explored to achieve the production of biomolecules as lipids and terpenoids, from which is possible to obtain biofuels and biofuels additives. The biofuels obtained from yeast, due to its origin, are classified as biofuels of third generation, and energetic and structurally are similar to fossil fuels, therefore some isoprenoids are used in the aviation industry and can be used for diesel engines. In this review, we describe some properties of the isoprenoids as precursors of biofuels and additives.