Biotechnological production of zeaxanthin by microorganisms

Abstract

BackgroundZeaxanthin is a natural xanthophyll carotenoid that is widely produced by plants, algae and microorganisms and plays a critical role in the prevention of age-related eye diseases, such as macular degeneration and cataracts. Zeaxanthin is also used in the food, pharmaceutical and nutraceutical industries because of its strong antioxidant and anti-cancer properties. To date, zeaxanthin has been primarily produced by extraction from natural resources, especially plants, which is costly and environmentally unfriendly. The biosynthesis of zeaxanthin by microorganisms has been reported in lots of works to provide another potential route for zeaxanthin production. Scope and approachIn this review, we discuss the zeaxanthin biosynthetic pathway, naturally occurring zeaxanthin-accumulating microorganisms containing bacteria and microalgae, the optimization of fermentation conditions using these microorganisms, and zeaxanthin production using microbial cells factory constructed by metabolic engineering. The different metabolic engineering strategies and the zeaxanthin-accumulating level of the reviewed wild and engineered microorganisms are also considered. Furthermore, this work presents perspectives concerning the microbial production of zeaxanthin, especially the trends to construct the metabolically engineered microorganisms for zeaxanthin production. Key findings and conclusionsTo date, all the reported wild zeaxanthin-accumulating microorganisms belong to either bacteria or microalgae, while most of the reported engineering microorganisms for zeaxanthin production are Escherichia coli or yeast. A feasible strategy for zeaxanthin production is the use of metabolic engineering to construct a zeaxanthin-accumulating microbial cells factories followed by the optimization of fermentation with the engineered strain. Besides the simple overexpression of the biosynthesizing genes, the dynamic regulation of the constructed pathway has also been used for zeaxanthin production by metabolic engineering. Construction of better microbial cells factories which produce more zeaxanthin will profit from the breakthrough of the following fields: Introduction of higher plant zeaxanthin biosynthesizing genes into microorganisms; Characterization of novel zeaxanthin pathway genes from the wild microorganisms producing high level of zeaxanthin; Deep investigation of the farnesyl diphosphate formation pathway; Construction of microbial host with weak antioxidative capacity.