Synthetic Biology for Cellular Remodelling to Elicit Industrially Relevant Microbial Phenotypes

Abstract

Industrial microbiology is proposing an increasing number of bio-based processes that are ready to move from the validation to the demonstration step, with the industrial world being more open to this opportunity for a change. The challenge is therefore to make such processes viable and competitive. When moving from the lab to the industrial scale, the degree of complexity is increasing, and the engineered cell factories very often display emerging properties that can be explained only from a systems perspective. Unfortunately, cellular rewiring often leads to a lower accumulation of the desired product. Synthetic biology is willing to take advantage from the knowledge on mechanisms involved in cellular homeostasis and, thanks to the principles of abstraction, modularity and standardisation, translate them into more efficient cell factories. Indeed, this novel approach to potentiate the power of metabolic engineering can be applied not only to a specific metabolic pathway but can be extended to networks indirectly connected to the pathway of interest. In this chapter, some of the principal synthetic tools developed to regulate or redirect the remodelling of cell factories, from genomic to metabolic level, with the aim to obtain higher titers, yield and productivity of bio-based products will be described and commented.