Chapter 1 - An introduction to microbial cell factories for production of biomolecules

Abstract

Microbial cell factories (MCFs) are flourishing and gaining much scientific attention due to their potential to synthesize a range of compounds to fulfill current demands of commodities in a sustainable manner. MCF is a production facility of organisms that aims at achieving a high yield of both native and nonnative metabolites by rewiring and optimizing the production process with the help of metabolic engineering and synthetic biology. In the past few decades, several natural microorganisms have been identified and used for the production and optimization of value-added biomolecules for therapeutic, biotechnological, and industrial applications. In this chapter, we explore various microbial hosts as microbial cell factories, its pathway designing, and optimization of microbial factories for the production of bioactive compounds.