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Glycolic acid is an important chemical product widely used in various fields, including cosmetics, detergents, textiles, and more. Currently, microbial production of glycolic acid has disadvantages such as poor genetic stability, low yield, and high cost. Additionally, whole-cell catalytic production of glycolic acid typically requires the addition of relatively expensive sorbitol as a carbon source, which limits its industrial production. To develop an industrially applicable method for glycolic acid production, this study used ethylene glycol as a substrate to screen the glycolic acid-producing strains through whole-cell catalysis, obtaining a Rhodotorula sp. capable of producing glycolic acid. The strain was then subjected to UV mutagenesis and high throughput screening, and the positive mutant strain RMGly-20 was obtained. After optimization in shake flasks, the glycolic acid titer of RMGly-20 reached 17.8 g/L, a 10.1-fold increase compared to the original strain. Using glucose as the carbon source and employing a fed-batch culture in a 5 L fermenter, strain RMGly-20 produced 61.1 g/L of the glycolic acid. This achievement marks the preliminary breeding of a genetically stable glycolic acid-producing strain using a cheap carbon source, providing a new host for the biosynthesis of glycolic acid and promoting further progress toward industrial production.

D-mannitol is a six-carbon sugar alcohol and one of the most abundant polyols in the nature. With antioxidant and osmotic pressure-regulating effects and non-metabolism by the human body, D-mannitol has been widely used in functional food and pharmaceutical industries. At present, a major way for industrial production of D-mannitol is chemical hydrogenation. In addition, D-Mannitol can be produced by microbial metabolism or catalysis. Compared with the chemical hydrogenation, the microbial methods for synthesizing mannitol do not produce sorbitol as a by-product and have the advantages of mild reaction conditions, strong specificity, and high conversion rate. Microbial fermentation is praised for easy access of strains and raw materials and simple separation of the product. Microbial catalysis usually adopts a multi-enzyme coupling strategy, which uses enzymes produced by engineered bacteria for whole-cell catalysis, and the cofactor recycling pathway is introduced to replenish expensive cofactor. This method can achieve high yields with cheap substrates under mild conditions without the formation of by-products. However, the application of microbial methods in the industrial production of D-mannitol is limited by the high costs of fermentation media and substrates and the long reaction time. This article reviews the reported microbial methods for producing D-mannitol, including the use of high-yielding strains and their fermentation processes, the utilization of low-cost substrates, whole-cell catalytic strategies, and the process control for high productivity. The biosynthesis of mannitol is not only of great significance for promoting industrial upgrading and realizing green manufacturing, but also provides strong support for the development of new bio-based products to meet the growing market demand. With the continuous improvement of technological innovation and industrial chain, it is expected to become one of the main ways of mannitol production in the future.

The construction and optimization of microbial cell factories are crucial steps and key technologies in achieving green biomanufacturing. As concern has been aroused regarding the excessive carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) emissions and food security, a new and promising research field, microbial conversion of CO 2 into food compounds, has emerged. The research in this field not only holds significant implications for achieving the carbon peaking and carbon neutrality goals but also plays a role in maintaining food security. This paper provides a comprehensive review and outlook of the research on utilizing CO 2 and its derived low-carbon chemicals for the production of food compounds, focusing on the production of glucose, sugar derivatives, and single-cell proteins and the development of artificial CO 2 fixation pathways.

Microbial production of chemicals from renewable biomass has emerged as a crucial route for sustainable bio-manufacturing. Lignocellulose with a renewable property and wide sources is supposed to be a promising feedstock for the second-generation biorefinery. The efficient co-utilization of mixed sugars from lignocellulosic hydrolysates represents one of the key challenges in reducing the production cost. However, most microorganisms prefer glucose over xylose due to carbon catabolite repression, which constrains the efficiency of lignocellulosic conversion. Therefore, developing the microbial platforms capable of simultaneously utilizing glucose and xylose is paramount for economically viable industrial-scale production. This article reviews the key strategies and studies of metabolic engineering for promoting efficient co-utilization of glucose and xylose by microorganisms. The representative strategies include relieving glucose repression, enhancing xylose transport, constructing xylose metabolic pathways, and directed evolution.

The development of synthetic biology has greatly promoted the construction of microbial cell factories, providing an important strategy for green and efficient chemical production. However, the bottleneck of poor tolerance to harsh industrial environments has become the key factor hampering the productivity of microbial cells. Adaptive evolution is an important method to domesticate microorganisms for a certain period by applying targeted selection pressure to obtain desired phenotypic or physiological properties that are adapted to a specific environment. Recently, with the development of technologies such as microfluidics, biosensors, and omics analysis, adaptive evolution has laid the foundation for efficient productivity of microbial cell factories. Herein, we discuss the key technologies of adaptive evolution and their important applications in improvement of environmental tolerance and production efficiency of microbial cell factories. Moreover, we looked forward to the prospects of adaptive evolution to realize industrial production by microbial cell factories.

Shikimic acid is an intermediate metabolite in the synthesis of aromatic amino acids in Escherichia coli and a synthetic precursor of Tamiflu. The biosynthesis of shikimic acid requires blocking the downstream shikimic acid consuming pathway that leads to inefficient production and cell growth inhibition. In this study, a dynamic molecular switch was constructed by using growth phase-dependent promoters and degrons. This dynamic molecular switch was used to uncouple cell growth from shikimic acid synthesis, resulting in the production of 14.33 g/L shikimic acid after 72 h fermentation. These results show that the dynamic molecular switch could redirect the carbon flux by regulating the abundance of target enzymes, for better production.

Enterokinase is a class of serine proteases that specifically recognize the cleavage DDDDK sequences. Therefore, enterokinase has been widely used as a tool enzyme in the field of biomedicine. Currently, the expression level of enterokinase in Pichia pastoris is low, which hinders related practical applications. In this study, the effects of six different signal peptides SP1, SP2, SP3, SP4, SP7 and SP8 on the secretory expression of enterokinase in Pichia pastoris were studied. Compared with α-factor, SP1 significantly increased the secretory expression of enterokinase (from 6.8 mg/L to 14.3 mg/L), and the enterokinase activity increased from (2 390±212) U/mL to (4 995±378) U/mL in shaking flask cultures. On this basis, the enterokinase activity was further enhanced to (7 219±489) U/mL by co-expressing the endogenous protein Kex2. Moreover, the activity that the mutant strain with N-terminal fusion of three amino acids of WLR was increased to (15 145±920) U/mL with a high specific activity of (1 174 600±53 100) U/mg. The efficient secretory expression of enterokinase laid a foundation for its applications in near future.

Cofactor engineering, as a new branch of metabolic engineering, mainly involves ATP/ADP, NADH/NAD⁺, NADPH/NADP⁺ and other cofactors. Cofactor engineering can maximize metabolic flow by directly regulating the concentration and form of the cofactor of key enzymes in cells, and quickly direct carbon flow to target metabolites. ATP, as an important cofactor, is involved in many enzyme-catalyzed reactions in microbial cells, and leads to the restriction of the distribution of metabolic pathways by connecting or linking them into a complex network. Therefore, ATP regulation strategy is expected to be a favorable tool for industrial strain modification, to improve the concentration and production capacity of target metabolites, strengthen microbial tolerance to the environment and promote substrate utilization rate. The present review focuses on the recently used effective ATP regulation strategies and the effects of ATP regulation on cell metabolism in order to provide references for the efficient construction of microbial cell factories.

Bacitracin is a broad-spectrum cyclic peptide antibiotic, and mainly produced by Bacillus. Energy metabolism plays as a critical role in high-level production of target metabolites. In this study, Bacillus licheniformis DW2, an industrial strain for bacitracin production, was served as the original strain. First, our results confirmed that elimination of cytochrome bd oxidase branch via deleting gene cydB benefited bacitracin synthesis. Bacitracin titer and ATP content were increased by 10.97% and 22.96%, compared with those of original strain, respectively. Then, strengthening cytochrome aa3 oxidase branch via overexpressing gene qoxA was conducive to bacitracin production. Bacitracin titer and ATP content were increased by 18.97% and 34.00%, respectively. In addition, strengthening ADP synthesis supply is also proven as an effective strategy to promote intracellular ATP accumulation, overexpression of adenosine kinase DcK and adenylate kinase AdK could all improve bacitracin titers, among which, dck overexpression strain showed the better performance, and bacitracin titer was increased by 16.78%. Based on the above individual methods, a method of combining the deletion of gene cydB and overexpression of genes qoxA, dck were used to enhance ATP content of cells to 39.54 nmol/L, increased by 49.32% compared to original strain, and bacitracin titer produced by the final strain DW2-CQD (DW2ΔcydB::qoxA::dck) was 954.25 U/mL, increased by 21.66%. The bacitracin titer produced per cell was 2.11 U/CFU, increased by 11.05%. Collectively, this study demonstrates that improving ATP content was an efficient strategy to improve bacitracin production, and a promising strain B. licheniformis DW2-CQD was attained for industrial production of bacitracin.

Bioreactors have been central in monoclonal antibodies and vaccines manufacturing by mammalian cells in suspension culture. Numerical simulation of five impeller combinations in a stirred bioreactor was conducted, and characteristics of velocity vectors, distributions of gas hold-up, distributions of shear rate in the bioreactor using 5 impeller combinations were numerically elucidated. In addition, genetically engineered CHO cells were cultivated in bioreactor installed with 5 different impeller combinations in fed-batch culture mode. The cell growth and antibody level were directly related to the maximum shear rate in the bioreactor, and the highest viable cell density and the peak antibody level were achieved in FBMI3 impeller combination, indicating that CHO cells are sensitive to shear force produced by impeller movement when cells were cultivated in bioreactor at large scale, and the maximum shear rate would play key roles in scaling-up of bioreactor at industrial scale.

Pyrroloquinoline quinone (PQQ), an important redox enzyme cofactor, has many physiological and biochemical functions, and is widely used in food, medicine, health and agriculture industry. In this study, PQQ production by recombinant Gluconobacter oxydans was investigated. First, to reduce the by-product of acetic acid, the recombinant strain G. oxydans T1 was constructed, in which the pyruvate decarboxylase (GOX1081) was knocked out. Then the pqqABCDE gene cluster and tldD gene were fused under the control of endogenous constitutive promoter P0169, to generate the recombinant strain G. oxydans T2. Finally, the medium composition and fermentation conditions were optimized. The biomass of G. oxydans T1 and G. oxydans T2 were increased by 43.02% and 38.76% respectively, and the PQQ production was 4.82 and 20.5 times higher than that of the wild strain, respectively. Furthermore, the carbon sources and culture conditions of G. oxydans T2 were optimized, resulting in a final PQQ yield of (51.32±0.899 7 mg/L), 345.6 times higher than that of the wild strain. In all, the biomass of G. oxydans and the yield of PQQ can be effectively increased by genetic engineering.

Uridine-cytidine kinase, an important catalyst in the compensation pathway of nucleotide metabolism, can catalyze the phosphorylation reaction of cytidine to 5'-cytidine monophosphate (CMP), but the reaction needs NTP as the phosphate donor. To increase the production efficiency of CMP, uridine-cytidine kinase gene from Thermus thermophilus HB8 and polyphosphate kinase gene from Rhodobacter sphaeroides were cloned and expressed in Escherichia coli BL21(DE3). Uridine-cytidine kinase was used for the generation of CMP from cytidine and ATP, and polyphosphate kinase was used for the regeneration of ATP. Then, the D403 metal chelate resin was used to adsorb Ni²⁺ to form an immobilized carrier, and the immobilized carrier was specifically combined with the recombinant enzymes to form the immobilized enzymes. Finally, single-factor optimization experiment was carried out to determine the reaction conditions of the immobilized enzyme. At 30 °C and pH 8.0, 60 mmol/L cytidine and 0.5 mmol/L ATP were used as substrates to achieve 5 batches of high-efficiency continuous catalytic reaction, and the average molar yield of CMP reached 91.2%. The above method has the advantages of low reaction cost, high product yield and high enzyme utilization rate, and has good applied value for industrial production.

The capacity for thermal tolerance is critical for industrial enzyme. In the past decade, great efforts have been made to endow wild-type enzymes with higher catalytic activity or thermostability using gene engineering and protein engineering strategies. In this study, a recently developed SpyTag/SpyCatcher system, mediated by isopeptide bond-ligation, was used to modify a rumen microbiota-derived xylanase XYN11-6 as cyclized and stable enzyme C-XYN11-6. After incubation at 60, 70 or 80 ℃ for 10 min, the residual activities of C-XYN11-6 were 81.53%, 73.98% or 64.41%, which were 1.48, 2.92 or 3.98-fold of linear enzyme L-XYN11-6, respectively. After exposure to 60-90°C for 10 min, the C-XYN11-6 remained as soluble in suspension, while L-XYN11-6 showed severely aggregation. Intrinsic and 8-anilino-1-naphthalenesulfonic acid (ANS)-binding fluorescence analysis revealed that C-XYN11-6 was more capable of maintaining its conformation during heat challenge, compared with L-XYN11-6. Interestingly, molecular cyclization also conferred C-XYN11-6 with improved resilience to 0.1-50 mmol/L Ca²⁺ or 0.1 mmol/L Cu²⁺ treatment. In summary, we generated a thermal- and ion-stable cyclized enzyme using SpyTag/SpyCatcher system, which will be of particular interest in engineering of enzymes for industrial application.

The phenylacetone monooxygenase, isolated from Thermobifida fusca, mainly catalyzes Baeyer-Villiger oxidation reaction towards aromatic compounds. Met446 plays a vital role in catalytic promiscuity, based on the structure and function of phenylacetone monooxygenase. Mutation in Met446 locus can offer enzyme new catalytic feature to activate C-H bond, oxidizing indole to finally generate indigo and indirubin, but the yield was only 1.89 mg/L. In order to further improve the biosynthesis efficiency of the whole-cell catalyst, metabolic engineering was applied to change glucose metabolism pathway of Escherichia coli. Blocking glucose isomerase gene pgi led to pentose phosphate pathway instead of the glycolytic pathway to become the major metabolic pathways of glucose, which provided more cofactor NADPH needed in enzymatic oxidation of indole. Engineering the host E. coli led to synthesis of indigo and indirubin efficiency further increased to 25 mg/L. Combination of protein and metabolic engineering to design efficient whole-cell catalysts not only improves the synthesis of indigo and indirubin, but also provides a novel strategy for whole-cell catalyst development.

1,2,4-Butanetriol (BT) is an important non-natural chemical with a variety of industrial applications. A recombinant Escherichia coli biosynthesizing BT from D-xylose was constructed by heterologously expressing xdh and mdlC, and knocking out competing pathway genes including xylA, xylB, yjhE, yagH and ycdW. To optimize BT synthesis pathway, the third catalytic step that catalyzes the decarboxylation reaction of 3-deoxy-D-glycero-pentulosonic acid was identified as a potential bottleneck. Consequently, 2-keto acid decarboxylases from three different microorganisms were screened, and the kivD gene from Lactococcus lactis was found to increase BT titer by 191%. The improved strain BW-025 reached a final BT titer of 2.38 g/L under optimized transformation conditions. Attempts on synthetic pathway optimization were also made by fine-tuning the expression levels of each enzyme involved in the whole pathway based on BW-025. As a result, an xdh overexpressed recombinant strain, BW-074 was finally generated, with 48.62% higher BT production than that of BW-025.

1,3-propanediol is an important chemical used as building block for the synthesis of highly promising polyesters such as polytrimethylene terephthalate. A genetically modified Klebsiella pneumoniae LDH526 can use glycerol as sole carbon source and produce 1,3-propanediol with the titer above 90 g/L. A key factor affecting the production of 1,3-propanediol by the mutant K. pneumoniae is the accurate control of the feeding of glycerol. To generate a robust and reproducible fermentation process of 1,3-propanediol, we designed and optimized an automatically feeding strategy of glycerol based on fermentation kinetics. By coupling the substrate feeding rate with easily observed variables -pH and fermentation time, we have achieved self-starting glycerol feeding and dynamic control of the glycerol concentration during the fermentation process. This automated system allowed us to generate a reproducible, consistent and operator-independent process from lab-scale to production scale. The final concentration of 1,3-propanediol was above 95 g/L after 72 h.

Anidulafungin is an effective antifungal medicine, which can inhibit activities of candida in vitro and in vivo. Echinocandin B (ECB) is the key precursor of Anidulafungin, thus the price and market prospect of Anidulafungin is directly due to the fermentation titer of ECB. In this study, Aspergillus nidulans was used for ECB fermentation, and the influence of adding microparticles on ECB fermentation was studied, such as talcum powder, Al2O3, and glass beads. The particle size and concentration were the key factors for mycelium morphology and ECB production, and ECB production could reach 1 262.9 mg/L and 1 344.1 mg/L by adding talcum powder of 20 g/L (d50 = 14.2 μm) and 7 glass beads (6 mm), an increase by 33.2% and 41.7%, respectively. The results indicated that the mycelium morphology of filamentous microorganisms and the product yield of fermentation could be improved by adding microparticles remarkably, and it provide an important method for the fermentative optimization of filamentous microorganisms.

Industrial bioprocess is one of the most important research fields supports the promoting of biological manufacturing industry in China, and guarantees the implementation of bioscience and biotechnology research results into the industrial applications. For improving the interconnection between academic researchers and industrial stuffs and pushing research achievement into industrial implementation, bioprocess modelling and control committee of Chinese Society for Microbiology organized two tandem conferences separately in 2012 and 2014 on the topic of "Industrial bioprocess technology", focusing mainly technique front of industrial bioprocess. A special session on industrial technique applications was hold to stimulate cooperation. The conference received many good submissions from academic and industrial sectors. This special issue is based on selected excellent papers from the submissions, together with free submissions. The special issue consists of reviews and original papers, mainly involving the aspects closely related to the bio-industrial sectors including, i) high yield strain constructing and high throughput screening; ii) optimization and modification of industrial enzymes, and iii) bioprocess modelling and high efficient scale-up method.

Although heterologous biosynthesis of polyketide erythromycin has been successfully achieved in Escherichia coli, the titer remains at a very low level (-10 mg/L). In this study, based on genome-scale metabolic model of E. coli, in silico method flux distribution comparison analysis was used to discover novel potential targets for heterologous 6-dEB biosynthesis. Synthetic small regulatory RNAs (sRNAs) was used to experimentally test 12 down-regulated targets. The results showed that repression of each of these target genes e.g. lsrC and ackA led to significantly improve heterologous 6-dEB biosynthesis. Using co-repression of lsrC and ackA, 6-dEB titer was improved by 59.9% in shake-flask with a maximum yield of 22.8 mg/L. This study indicates that combined flux distribution comparison analysis and synthetic small regulatory RNAs is an effective strategy to improve 6-dEB production in E. coli.

Carbon-limited continuous culture was used to study the relationship between the growth of Aspergillus niger and the production of glucoamylase. The result showed that when the specific growth rate was lower than 0.068 h(-1), the production of glucoamylase was growth-associated, when the specific growth rate was higher than 0.068 h(-1), the production of glucoamylase was not growth-associated. Based on the result of continuous culture, the Monod dynamics model of glucose consumption of A. niger was constructed, Combining Herbert-Pirt equation of glucose and oxygen consumption with Luedeking-Piret equation of enzyme production, the black-box model of Aspergillus niger for enzyme production was established. The exponential fed-batch culture was designed to control the specific growth rate at 0.05 h(-1) by using this model and the highest yield for glucoamylase production by A. niger reached 0.127 g glucoamylase/g glucose. The black-box model constructed in this study successfully described the glucoamylase production by A. niger and the result of the model fitted the measured value well. The black-box model could guide the design and optimization of glucoamylase production by A. niger.

Agitator is one of the essential factors to realize high efficient fermentation for high aerobic and viscous microorganisms, and the influence of different impeller combination on the fermentation process is very important. Welan gum is a microbial exopolysaccharide produced by Alcaligenes sp. under high aerobic and high viscos conditions. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) numerical simulation was used for analyzing the distribution of velocity, shear rate and gas holdup in the welan fermentation reactor under six different impeller combinations. The best three combinations of impellers were applied to the fermentation of welan. By analyzing the fermentation performance, the MB-4-6 combination had better effect on dissolved oxygen and velocity. The content of welan was increased by 13%. Furthermore, the viscosity of production were also increased.

Rhamnolipid biosurfactant is mainly produced by Pseudomonas aeruginosa that is the opportunistic pathogenic strain and not suitable for future industrial development. In order to develop a relatively safe microbial strain for the production of rhamnolipid biosurfactant, we constructed engineered Escherichia coli strains for rhamnolipid production by expressing different copy numbers of rhamnosyltransferase (rhlAB) gene with the constitutive synthetic promoters of different strengths in E. coli ATCC 8739. We further studied the combinatorial regulation of rhlAB gene and rhaBDAC gene cluster for dTDP-1-rhamnose biosynthesis with different synthetic promoters, and obtained the best engineered strain-E. coli TIB-RAB226. Through the optimization of culture temperature, the titer of rhamnolipd reached 124.3 mg/L, 1.17 fold higher than that under the original condition. Fed-batch fermentation further improved the production of rhamnolipid and the titer reached the highest 209.2 mg/L within 12 h. High performance liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) analysis showed that there are total 5 mono-rhamnolipid congeners with different nuclear mass ratio and relative abundance. This study laid foundation for heterologous biosynthesis of rhanomilipd.

Cell growth profiles were evaluated in shake-flask culture to improve sclareol production by the engineered yeast strain Saccharomyces cerevisiae S7. Product formation was tightly coupled with cell growth. High cell density cultures were performed with different carbon sources using a dissolved oxygen level feedback-control strategy in a 3 L bioreactor. The titers of sclareol were 253 mg/L, 386 mg/L and 408 mg/L, respectively, when glucose, ethanol and glucose/ethanol mixture were used as the carbons sources. The maximal titer was 27-fold higher than that obtained under shake-flask culture conditions. The results suggested that the presence of ethanol was beneficial to sclareol production. These results provided useful information for optimization of yeast cell factory and efficient production of terpenoids.

Manganese peroxidase (MnP), a crucial enzyme in lignin degradation, has wide potential applications in environmental protection. However, large-scale industrial application of this enzyme is limited due to several factors primarily related to cost and availability. Special attention has been paid to the production of MnP from inexpensive sources, such as lignocellulosic residues, using solid-state fermentation (SSF) systems. In the present study, a suitable SSF medium for the production of MnP by Schizophyllum sp. F17 from agro-industrial residues has been optimized. The mixed solid medium, comprising pine sawdust, rice straw, and soybean powder at a ratio of 0.52:0.15:0.33, conferred a maximum enzyme activity of 11.18 U/g on the sixth day of SSF. The results show that the use of wastes such as pine sawdust and rice straw makes the enzyme production more economical as well as helps solve environmental problems.

Ethanol tolerance is related to the expression of multiple genes, and genome-based engineering approaches are much more efficient than manipulation of single genes. In this study, ultraviolet (UV) mutagenesis, dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) air plasma mutagenesis, and artificial transcription factor (ATF) technology were adopted to treat an industrial yeast strain S. cerevisiae Sc4126 to obtain mutants with improved ethanol tolerance. Mutants with high ethanol tolerance were obtained, and the ratio of positive mutants was compared. Among the three approaches, the rate of positive mutation obtained by ATF technology was 10- to 100-folds of that of the two other methods, with highest genetic stability, suggesting the ATF technology promising for rapid alteration of phenotypes of industry yeast strains for efficient ethanol fermentation.

Fungal elicitors are a group of chemicals that can stimulate the secondary metabolite production in plants and microbial cells. After being recognized, it could enhance the expression of related genes through the signal-transduction pathway; regulate the activity of the enzyme involved in the biosynthesis of secondary metabolites. In recent years, the inducible mechanism of fungal elicitors has been studied deeply worldwide. Meanwhile, it has acquired wide concern in the area of biological industry, especially in the fermentation industry. This paper addresses the application and prospect of fungal elicitors in the secondary metabolites of plant and microbial cells.

Higher alcohols have a high energy density, low hygroscopicity and can be mixed with gasoline at any ratio. It is the trend to replace fossil fuels with biofuels produced via microbial fermentation of renewable resources. We reviewed the progress in the development of engineered Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Escherichia coli that can produce higher alcohols, as well as the related technology platforms. We mainly focused on the construction of CoA-dependent pathways and alpha-keto acid mediated non-fermentative pathways, analyzed their respective characteristics, and summarized the construction strategies. The problems to be solved and future research direction were also discussed.

Succinic acid production by fermentation from biomass, especially the lignocellulosic hydrolysate, is an alternative to chemical synthesis. Many studies report the inhibition of cell growth and succinic acid production from lignocellulosic hydrolysate, hardly is known about the actual kinetic and mechanism of the inhibition of individual factors. In this study, we studied inhibition effects of furfurals and 5-hydroxymethylfurfural (5-HMF) on cell growth and succinic acid production of engineered E. coli. Cell growth and succinic acid titer were severely inhibited by furfural and HMF with both concentrations higher than 0.8 g/L. Cell growth was totally inhibited when the concentration of furfural was above 6.4 g/L, or the concentration of HMF was above 12.8 g/L. At the concentration of maximum toleration, which was 3.2 g/L, furfural decreased the cell mass by 77.8% and the succinic acid titer by 36.1%. HMF decreased the cell mass by 13.6% and the succinic acid titer by 18.3%. Activity measurements of key enzymes revealed that phosphoenolpyruvate carboxylase, malate dehydrogenase, fumarate reductase all were inhibited by furfural and HMF. This study gave a quantitative view to the succinic acid production under the inhibition of lignocellulose degradation products and will help overcome the difficulties of the lignocellulosic hydrolysate fermentation.

Malic acid is widely used in food, and chemical industries. Through overexpressing pyruvate carboxylase and malate dehydrogenase in pdc1-deficient Saccharomyces cerevisiae, malic acid was successfully produced through the reductive TCA pathway. No malic acid was detected in wild type Saccharomyces cerevisiae, however, 45 mmol/L malic acid was produced in engineered strain, and the concentration of byproduct ethanol also reduced by 18%. The production of malic acid enhanced 6% by increasing the concentration of Ca2+. In addition, the final concentration reached 52.5 mmol/L malic acid by addition of biotin. The increasing is almost 16% higher than that of the original strain.

Biobased chemicals are one of the main missions of bioeconomy. In this special issue, we reviewed the recent progress in the metabolic engineering and fermentation control study on biobased succinic acid, adipic acid, lactic acid, 3-hydroxypropanoic acid, glucaric acid, glycerol, xylitol, higher alcohols and ethylene, recombinant construction for the direct utilization of lignocelluloses, biotransformation of bio-based lactic acid, and salting-out extraction of bio-based chemicals. Some research articles on biobased succinic acid, D-mannitol, malic acid, 5-aminolevulinic acid, 1,3-propanediol, and butanol are also included.

D-Mannitol has wide applications in food, pharmaceutical, and chemical industries. In this study, we constructed a genetically stable Escherichia coli strain for D-mannitol production by integrating mannitol dehydrogenase (mdh) and fructose permease (fupL) genes of Leuconostoc pseudomesenteroides ATCC 12291 into chromosome of E. coli ATCC 8739 and inactivating other fermentation pathways (including pyruvate formate-lyase, lactate dehydrogenase, fumarate reductase, alcohol dehydrogenase, methylglyoxal synthase and pyruvate oxidase). Using mineral salts medium with glucose and fructose as carbon sources, the engineered strain could produce 1.2 mmol/L D-mannitol after anaerobic fermentation for 6 days. Based on the coupling of cell growth and D-mannitol production, metabolic evolution was used to improve D-mannitol production. After evolution for 80 generations, D-mannitol titer increased 2.6-fold and mannitol dehydrogenase activity increased 2.8-fold. Genetically stable strains constructed in this work could ferment sugars to produce D-mannitol without the addition of antibiotics, inducers and formate, which was favorable for industrial production.

Lignocellulosic biomass represents an abundant, low-cost and renewable source of potentially fermentable sugars. It is acandidate besides petroleum as feedstock for fuel and chemical production. Recent researches on utilizing lignocellulosicsas feedstock boost development of numerous-promising processes for a variety of fuels and chemicals, such as biodiesel, biohydrogen and ethanol. However, high cost in depolymerization is a primary obstacle preventing the use of lignocellulosic biomass as feedstock. Consolidated bioprocessing (CBP), refers to the bioprocess without any exogenous cellulolyotic enzymes added, converting the lignocellulosic material into biochemicals directly, which could potentially avoid the cost of the dedicated enzyme generation step by incorporating enzyme-generating, biomass-degrading and bioproduct-producing capabilities into a single organism through genetic engineering. There are two CBP strategies, native strategy and recombinant strategy. We mainly introduce the recombinant strategy, including its principle, the two responding styles, the contributions of synthetic biology and metabolic engineering and the future challenges.

Ethylene is the most widely used petrochemical feedstock globally. The development of bio-ethylene is essential due to limited fossil fuels and rising oil prices. Bio-ethylene is produced primarily by the dehydration of ethanol, but can alternatively be directly produced from ethylene biosynthesis pathways in plants, algae, or microorganisms by using cheap and renewable substrates. This review addressed the biosynthesis of ethylene in plants and microorganisms, the characterization of key enzymes, genetic engineering strategies for ethylene biosynthesis in microorganisms, and evaluated its perspective and successful cases toward the industrial application. The direct production of bio-ethylene from a biological process in situ is promising to supplement and even replace the petrochemical ethylene production.

Succinic acid is an important C4 platform chemical in the synthesis of many commodity and special chemicals. In the present work, different compounds were evaluated for succinic acid production by Actinobacillus succinogenes GXAS 137. Important parameters were screened by the single factor experiment and Plackeet-Burman design. Subsequently, the highest production of succinic acid was approached by the path of steepest ascent. Then, the optimum values of the parameters were obtained by Box-Behnken design. The results show that the important parameters were glucose, yeast extract and MgCO3 concentrations. The optimum condition was as follows (g/L): glucose 70.00, yeast extract 9.20 and MgCO3 58.10. Succinic acid yield reached 47.64 g/L at the optimal condition. Succinic acid increased by 29.14% than that before the optimization (36.89 g/L). Response surface methodology was proven to be a powerful tool to optimize succinic acid production.

Adipic acid is a six-carbon dicarboxylic acid, mainly for the production of polymers such as nylon, chemical fiber and engineering plastics. Its annual demand is close to 3 million tons worldwide. Currently, the industrial production of adipic acid is based on the oxidation of aromatics from non-renewable petroleum resources by chemo-catalytic processes. It is heavily polluted and unsustainable, and the possible alternative method for adipic acid production should be developed. In the past years, with the development of synthetic biology and metabolic engineering, green and clean biotechnological methods for adipic acid production attracted more attention. In this study, the research advances of adipic acid and its precursor production are reviewed, followed by addressing the perspective of the possible new pathways for adipic acid production.

Succinic acid is one of the key intermediates in the tricarboxylic acid cycle (TCA)and has huge potentials in biopolymer, food, medicine applications. This article reviews recent research progress in the production of succinic acid by microbial fermentation, including discovery and screening of the succinic-acid-producing microbes, the progress of genetic engineering strategy and metabolic engineering technology for construction of succinic acid-producing strains, and fermentation process control and optimization. Finally, we discussed the limitation of current progress and proposed the future research needs for microbial production of succinic acid.

Lactic acid is an important platform chemical. Especially with rapid development of poly (lactic acid) industry, the demand for L-lactic acid is continuously increasing. To further reduce the fermentation costs and improve the robustness of strains from industrial point of view, many modern biotechnological approaches have been applied to strain development. In this review, we briefly summarize recent advances in L-lactate fermentation by genetically modified microorganisms, including lactic acid bacteria, yeast, E. coli and Rhizopus species.

1,3-propanediol production with the byproduct of biodiesel production is important to increase the economic benefit of biodiesel industry. Accumulation of 3-hydroxypropionaldehyde is one of the key problems in the 1,3-propanediol fermentation process, leading to the cell death and the fermentation abnormal ceasing. Different from the traditional way of reducing the accumulation of the 3-hydroxypropionaldehyde, we introduced the polyhydroxybutyrate pathway into the Klebsiella pneumoniae for the first time to enhance the tolerance of K. pneumoniae to 3-hydroxypropionaldehyde, at the same time, to improve the 1,3-propanediol production. Plasmid pDK containing phbC, phbA, phbB gene was constructed and transformed into K. pneumoniae successfully. PHB was detected in the engineered K. pneumoniae after IPTG induction and its content enhanced with the IPTG concentration increasing. The optimized IPTG concentration was 0.5 mmol/L. The constructed K. pneumoniae could produce 1,3-propanediol normally, at the same time accumulate polyhydroxybutyrate. With the constructed strain, the fermentation proceeds normally with the initial glucose was 70 g/L which the wild type strain stopped growing and the fermentation was ceasing; 1,3-propanediol concentration and yield reached 31.3 g/L and 43.9% at 72 h. Our work is helpful for the deep understanding of 1,3-propanediol metabolic mechanism of Klebsiella pneumoniae, and also provides a new way for strain optimization of Klebsiella pneumoniae.

Confronted with the gradual exhaustion of the earth's fossil energy resources and the grimmer environmental deterioration, the bio-based process to produce high-value added platform chemicals from renewable biomass is attracting growing interest. Escherichia coli has been chosen as a workhouse for the production of many valuable chemicals due to various advantages, such as clear genetic background, convenient to be genetically modified and good growth properties with low nutrient requirements. Rational strain development of E. coli achieved by metabolic engineering strategies has provided new processes for efficiently biotechnological production of various high-value chemical building blocks. This review focuses on recent progresses in metabolic engineering of E. coli that lead to efficient recombinant biocatalysts for production of high-value organic acids such as succinic acid, 3-hydroxypropanoic acid and glucaric acid as well as alcohols like glycerol and xylitol. Besides, this review also discusses several other platform chemicals, including 2,5-furan dicarboxylic acid, aspartic acid, glutamic acid, itaconic acid, levulinic acid, 3-hydroxy-gamma-butyrolactone and sorbitol, which have not been produced by E. coli until now.

Fermentative production of lactic acid, an important bio-based chemicals, has made considerable progress. In addition to the food industry and production of polylactic acid, lactic acid also can be used as an important platform chemical for the production of acrylic acid, pyruvic acid, 1,2-propanediol, and lactic acid esters. This article summarizes the recent progress in biocatalytic production of lactic acid derivatives by dehydration, dehydrogenation, reduction, and esterification. Trends in the biotransformation of lactic acid are also discussed.

5-aminolevulinic acid (ALA), a precursor for biosynthesis of pyrrole compounds in living organisms, has been widely used in agriculture and medical photodynamics therapy and is regarded as a promising value-added bio-based chemical. In the previous investigations on ALA production with recombinant Escherichia coli expressing heterogenous C4 pathway gene, LB media supplemented with glucose and ALA precursors succinate and glycine is widely used, leading to high production cost. Succinate participates in ALA biosynthesis in a form of succinyl-CoA. In this study, genes involved in succinyl-CoA consumption, sdhAB (encoding succinic dehydrogenase) or sucCD (encoding succinyl-CoA synthetase) of E. coli MG1655 was knocked out and tested for ALA accumulation. In comparison with the recombinant E. coli strain expressing heterogenous ALA synthetase, the sdhAB- or sucCD-deficient strain accumulate 25.59% and 12.40%, respectively, more ALA in a 5 L fermentor using a defined synthetic medium with glucose as main carbon source and without supplementation of succinate, providing a novel cost-effective approach for industrial production of ALA.

For metabolic engineering of cyanobacteria, there is an urgent need to construct a group of efficient heterologous gene expression platforms and to evaluate their expression efficiencies. Here we constructed three integrative vectors, the pKW1188-derived pFQ9F, pFQ9R and pFQ20, for integration of heterologous genes into the genome of the model cyanobacteria strain Synechocystis sp. strain PCC6803. The pFQ16, an RSF1010-derived broad host range shuttle vector, was constructed for conjugative transfer of genes to various cyanobacteria strains. All the four platforms constructed here applied the rbc (encodes Ribulose-1, 5-bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase) and the rbc terminator to promote and terminate the gene transcription. Besides, a "Shine-Dalgarno -AUG" fusion translation strategy was used to keep the high protein translation efficiency. Using lacZ as a reporter gene, the expression efficiency of pFQ20 was evaluated and showed a strong beta-galactosidase expression (109 Miller). Furthermore, the platform pFQ20 was used to express the E. coli tesA' gene and showed significant protein bands through the Western Blot test. The expression platforms constructed in this study offer useful molecular tools for metabolic engineering of cyanobacteria in the future.

Synthetic biology has developed quickly worldwide. In this special issue, we reviewed its recent progresses in technologies and applications, these are: markerless knockout of chromosome genes in Streptomycetes spp. and in gene synthesis technology, in microbial genome reduction and modification, as well as genome minimization method based on metabolic network analysis and combinatorial optimization of synthetic biological systems. We also discussed photosynthetic cyanobacterial chassis, development in molecular genetic manipulation of solventogenic clostridiax. Protein budget: cost estimating criteria for synthetic biology, was also brought out for our attentions. On the application sites, some successful applications of synthetic biology were demonstrated, including design and construction of artificial biological systems for complex natural products biosynthesis, engineering the Saccharomyces cerevisiae for sclareol production, and engineering the xylose metabolic pathway for microbial production of bio-based chemicals.

As the rapid development of economy necessitates a large number of oil, the contradiction between energy supply and demand is further exacerbated by the dwindling reserves of petroleum resource. Therefore, the research of the renewable cellulosic biomass resources is gaining unprecedented momentum. Because xylose is the second most abundant monosaccharide after glucose in lignocellulose hydrolyzes, high-efficiency bioconversion of xylose becomes one of the vital factors that affect the industrial prospects of lignocellulose application. According to the research progresses in recent years, this review summarized the advances in bioconversion of xylose, which included identification and redesign of the xylose metabolic pathway, engineering the xylose transport pathway and bio-based chemicals production. In order to solve the energy crisis and environmental pollution issues, the development of advanced bio-fuel technology, especially engineering the microbe able to metabolize xylose and produce ethanol by synthetic biology, is environmentally benign and sustainable.

Solventogenic clostridia are important industrial microorganisms. Optimization of the fermentation performance of solventogenic clostridia, through genetic modification, has always been considered as the main topic involved in solvents production. However, due to the incomplete genetic tools, no research breakthroughs have been achieved. In recent years, with the development of new technologies and methods (e.g. TargeTron gene knockout, large DNA fragment integration method), great progresses have been made towards genetic engineering solventogenic clostridia. In this review, we summarize the development of the genetic tools for solventogenic clostridial species, and simultaneously point out the shortages of the existing technologies in efficiency and comprehensiveness. Therefore, optimization of the existing technologies in gene inactivation in clostridia, such as establishing homologous exchange-based gene deletion and exchange, is still imperative; and in parallel, new genetic tools (e.g. multiplex genome editing, targeted or random multi-copy gene integration) should also be timely developed.

In the present study, we developed a two-liquid phase fermentation system by adding 1% n-dodecane as oxygen-vector to enhance the microbial lipids productivity of Trichosporon fermentans using cassava starch hydrolysate. Results suggest that the oxygen-vector could alleviate the oxygen shortage in flask fermentation. The cell mass and lipids concentration were 101.2 g/L and 50.28 respectively in 2 L fermenter with the presence of 1% n-dodecane. Additionally, gas chromatography analysis also reveals that the microbial lipids produced by T. fermentans contained a higher percentage of saturated fatty acid in the oxygen-vector case.

Alpha-ketogluratate is one of the key intermediates in the TCA cycle, playing an important role in the connection of carbon and nitrogen metabolism. This article aims at stating recent research progress in the production of alpha-ketoglutarate by microbial fermentation. First, a large group of microbes have been screened to accumulate alpha-ketoglutarate including prokaryotes and eukaryotes. Second, physiological characterization of over-accumulation of alpha-ketoglutarate is caused by thiamine defect and nitrogen starvation. Third, the process of fermentation was controlled and optimized by the manipulation of pH, dissolved oxygen and cofactors. Fourth, many metabolic engineering strategies were also presented for alpha-ketoglutarate production focusing on regeneration of cofactor and manipulation of the pathway. Last, we discussed the limitation of current progress and proposed the future research needs for microbial production of alpha-ketoglutarate.

N-Acetylornithine aminotransferase (EC 2.6.1.11, ACOAT) catalyzes the conversion of N-acetylglutamic semialdehyde to N-acetylornithine, the forth step involved in the L-arginine biosynthetic pathways. We studied the enzyme properties to set up reliable theoretical basis for the arginine fermentation optimization. ACOAT encoding gene argD was cloned from an industrial L-arginine producer Corynebacterium crenatum SYPA 5-5. Analysis of argD sequences revealed that only one ORF existed, which coded a peptide of 390 amino acids with a calculated molecular weight of 41.0 kDa. The argD gene from C. crenatum SYPA 5-5 was expressed both in Escherichia coli BL21 and C. crenatum SYPA. Then ACOAT was purified by Ni-NTA affinity chromatography and its specific enzyme activity was 108.2 U/g. Subsequently, the expression plasmid pJCtac-CcargD was transformed into C. crenatum SYPA and the specific activity of ACOAT was improved evidently in the recombinant C. crenatum CCD. Further fermentative character of CCD1 was also analyzed. The results showed that the L-arginine producing ability of the recombinant strain was 39.7 g/L improved by 14.7%.

Ethanol is an attractive alternative to fossil fuels. Saccharomyces cerevisiae is the most important ethanol producer. However, in the process of industrial production of ethanol, both cell growth and fermentation of ethanologenic S. cerevisiae are dramatically affected by environmental stresses, such as thermal stress. In this study, we improved both the thermotolerance and fermentation performance of industrial ethanologenic S. cerevisiae by combined usage of chemical mutagenesis and genomic DNA mutagenesis-based genetic recombination method. The recombinant S. cerevisiae strain T44-2 could grow at 44 degrees C, 3 degrees C higher than that of the original strain CE6. The survival rate of T44-2 was 1.84 and 1.87-fold of that of CE6 when heat shock at 48 degrees C and 52 degrees C for 1 h respectively. At temperature higher than 37 degrees C, recombinant strain T44-2 always gave higher cell growth and ethanol production than those of strain CE6. Meanwhile, from 30 degrees C to 40 degrees C, recombinant strain T44-2 produces 91.2-83.8 g/L of ethanol from 200 g/L of glucose, which indicated that the recombinant strain T44-2 had both thermotolerance and broad thermal adaptability. The work offers a novel method, called genomic DNA mutagenesis-based genetic recombination, to improve the physiological functions of S. cerevisiae.

A comparative study of batch and repeated batch process was carried out for astaxanthin fermentation of Phaffia rhodozyma to develop a more economical method for astaxanthin industrial production. In shaking flask fermentation, the change of biomass and astaxanthin production was studied to compare the five-day cycle with four-day cycle of repeated batch culture of P. rhodozyma. Astaxanthin production increased at first and then decreased subsequently in seven cycles, yet the yield of astaxanthin in the next six cycles remains higher than that of the first cycle. Comparing the average production of astaxanthin in the seven cycles, four-day cycle performed even better than five-day cycle. Subsequently, a repeated fed-batch process was used in a 5-1 bioreactor. The experimental data showed that biomass and astaxanthin production of the second batch could reach the level of the first batch, no matter that the carbon source was glucose or hydrolysis sugar of starch. This result showed that this strain had good stability, and thus repeated batch and fed-batch process could be applied in astaxanthin fermentation for economical purpose.