**3. Practical Applications**

Several researchers have actively focused on carotenoids from microalgal sources; the major areas, in terms of actual or potential industrial applications, are food and health—and the antioxidant properties exhibited by that class of compounds constitutes at present its core interest. Pigments of microalgal origin are indeed experiencing a strong market demand: the price of microalgal Ά-carotene easily attains 700 €/kg, whereas its synthetic counterpart cannot reach more than half that figure. Natural Ά-carotene is preferred by the health market because it is a mixture  of *trans* and *cis* isomers—the latter of which possess anticancer features; such a mixture can hardly be obtained via chemical synthesis [14]. 
