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Recent advances in production of 5-aminolevulinic acid using biological strategies

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Abstract

5-Aminolevulinic acid (5-ALA) is the precursor for the biosynthesis of tetrapyrrole compounds and has broad applications in the medical and agricultural fields. Because of the disadvantages of chemical synthesis methods, microbial production of 5-ALA has drawn intensive attention and has been regarded as an alternative in the last years, especially with the rapid development of metabolic engineering and synthetic biology. In this mini-review, recent advances on the application and microbial production of 5-ALA using novel biological approaches (such as whole-cell enzymatic-transformation, metabolic pathway engineering and cell-free process) are described and discussed in detail. In addition, the challenges and prospects of synthetic biology are discussed.

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Acknowledgements

This work was financially supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (JUSRP51707A), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31670092) and the Program for Changjiang Scholars and Innovative Research Team in University (No. IRT_15R26).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Industrial Biotechnology, Ministry of Education, School of Biotechnology, Jiangnan University, 1800 Lihu Road, Wuxi, 214122, Jiangsu, China

    Zhen Kang, Wenwen Ding, Xu Gong, Qingtao Liu & Jian Chen

  2. The Key Laboratory of Carbohydrate Chemistry and Biotechnology, Ministry of Education, School of Biotechnology, Jiangnan University, Wuxi, 214122, China

    Zhen Kang, Wenwen Ding, Xu Gong, Qingtao Liu & Guocheng Du

  3. Synergetic Innovation Center of Food Safety and Nutrition, 1800 Lihu Road, Wuxi, 214122, Jiangsu, China

    Zhen Kang, Guocheng Du & Jian Chen

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  1. Zhen Kang
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  2. Wenwen Ding
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  3. Xu Gong
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  4. Qingtao Liu
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  5. Guocheng Du
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Correspondence to Zhen Kang.

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Kang, Z., Ding, W., Gong, X. et al. Recent advances in production of 5-aminolevulinic acid using biological strategies. World J Microbiol Biotechnol 33, 200 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11274-017-2366-7

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