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Microbial CRISPRi and CRISPRa Systems for Metabolic Engineering

  • Review Paper
  • Metabolic Engineering
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Abstract

Transcriptional regulation is essential for maintaining the natural cell metabolism of microbes and therefore important for metabolic engineering. The development of non-native transcriptional regulation tools in engineered microbes may change the gene expression and metabolic flux, and shall benefit the product titer and yield in bioprocess. CRISPR interference (CRISPRi), as an artificial transcriptor which may regulate any gene at different scales, has rapidly gained popularity for metabolic engineering strains. This article briefly describes the mechanism and development of CRISPRi, including inhibition and activation of two forms of action and several different sources of dCas9 protein. And we summarize the applications of CRISPRi in regulating the metabolic pathway, changing the physiological state of the host, and genomic screening. Finally, we analyze a few limitations of the CRISPRi system and summarize some ways to improve them.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31730003, 31670077) and Natural Science Foundation of Shandong Province (ZR2017ZB0210).

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  1. State Key Laboratory of Microbial Technology, Shandong University, Jinan, Shandong, China

    Yi Zheng, Tianyuan Su & Qingsheng Qi

  2. CAS Key Lab of Biobased Materials, Qingdao Institute of Bioenergy and Bioprocess Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Qingdao, Shandong, China

    Qingsheng Qi

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Zheng, Y., Su, T. & Qi, Q. Microbial CRISPRi and CRISPRa Systems for Metabolic Engineering. Biotechnol Bioproc E 24, 579–591 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12257-019-0107-5

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