Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology

, Volume 85, Issue 6, pp 1653–1663 | Cite as

Current state of coenzyme Q10 production and its applications

  • Marimuthu Jeya
  • Hee-Jung Moon
  • Jeong-Lim Lee
  • In-Won Kim
  • Jung-Kul Lee
Mini-Review
First Online:
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:

Abstract

Coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10), an obligatory cofactor in the aerobic respiratory electron transfer for energy generation, is formed from the conjugation of a benzoquinone ring with a hydrophobic isoprenoid chain. CoQ10 is now used as a nutritional supplement because of its antioxidant properties and is beneficial in the treatment of several human diseases when administered orally. Bioprocesses have been developed for the commercial production of CoQ10 because of its increased demand, and these bioprocesses depend on microbes that produce high levels of CoQ10 naturally. However, as knowledge of the biosynthetic enzymes and the regulatory mechanisms modulating CoQ10 production increases, approaches arise for the genetic engineering of CoQ10 production in Escherichia coli and Agrobacterium tumefaciens. This review focused on approaches for CoQ10 production, strategies used to engineer CoQ10 production in microbes, and potential applications of CoQ10.

Keywords

Agrobacterium tumefaciens Application Coenzyme Q10 Metabolic engineering Production 
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Notes

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the 21C Frontier Microbial Genomics and Applications Center Program, Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, Republic of Korea.

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Copyright information

© Springer-Verlag 2009

Authors and Affiliations

  • Marimuthu Jeya
    • 1
  • Hee-Jung Moon
    • 2
  • Jeong-Lim Lee
    • 1
  • In-Won Kim
    • 1
  • Jung-Kul Lee
    • 1
    • 3
  1. 1.Department of Chemical EngineeringKonkuk UniversitySeoulSouth Korea
  2. 2.Department of Bioscience and BiotechnologyKonkuk UniversitySeoulSouth Korea
  3. 3.Institute of Biomedical Science and TechnologyKonkuk UniversitySeoulSouth Korea

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