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Engineering microbial factories for synthesis of value-added products

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  • Published:
Journal of Industrial Microbiology & Biotechnology

Abstract

Microorganisms have become an increasingly important platform for the production of drugs, chemicals, and biofuels from renewable resources. Advances in protein engineering, metabolic engineering, and synthetic biology enable redesigning microbial cellular networks and fine-tuning physiological capabilities, thus generating industrially viable strains for the production of natural and unnatural value-added compounds. In this review, we describe the recent progress on engineering microbial factories for synthesis of valued-added products including alkaloids, terpenoids, flavonoids, polyketides, non-ribosomal peptides, biofuels, and chemicals. Related topics on lignocellulose degradation, sugar utilization, and microbial tolerance improvement will also be discussed.

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Acknowledgments

We thank the National Institutes of Health (GM077596), the National Academies Keck Futures Initiative on Synthetic Biology, the Biotechnology Research and Development Consortium (BRDC) (Project 2-4-121), the British Petroleum Energy Biosciences Institute, and the National Science Foundation as part of the Center for Enabling New Technologies through Catalysis (CENTC), CHE-0650456, and the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) (220-2009-1-D00033) for financial support. J. Du also acknowledges both the Chia-chen Chu graduate fellowship from the School of Chemical Sciences and the Henry Drickamer Fellowship support from the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Illinois.

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  1. Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, 61801, USA

    Jing Du, Zengyi Shao & Huimin Zhao

  2. Departments of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Institute of Genomic Biology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, 61801, USA

    Huimin Zhao

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  1. Jing Du
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  2. Zengyi Shao
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  3. Huimin Zhao
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Correspondence to Huimin Zhao.

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Jing Du and Zengyi Shao contributed equally to this work.

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Du, J., Shao, Z. & Zhao, H. Engineering microbial factories for synthesis of value-added products. J Ind Microbiol Biotechnol 38, 873–890 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10295-011-0970-3

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