Abstract
Microorganisms are effective platforms for the production of a variety of chemicals including biofuels, commodity chemicals, polymers and other natural products. However, deep cellular understanding is required for improvement of current biofuel cell factories to truly transform the Bioeconomy. Modifications in microbial metabolic pathways and increased resistance to various types of stress caused by the production of these chemicals are crucial in the generation of robust and efficient production hosts. Recent advances in systems and synthetic biology provide new tools for metabolic engineering to design strategies and construct optimal biocatalysts for the sustainable production of desired chemicals, especially in the case of ethanol and fatty acid production. Yeast is an efficient producer of bioethanol and most of the available synthetic biology tools have been developed for the industrial yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Non-conventional yeast systems have several advantageous characteristics that are not easily engineered such as ethanol tolerance, low pH tolerance, thermotolerance, inhibitor tolerance, genetic diversity and so forth. Currently, synthetic biology is still in its initial steps for studies in non-conventional yeasts such as Yarrowia lipolytica, Kluyveromyces marxianus, Issatchenkia orientalis and Pichia pastoris. Therefore, the development and application of advanced synthetic engineering tools must also focus on these underexploited, non-conventional yeast species. Herein, we review the basic synthetic biology tools that can be applied to the standard S. cerevisiae model strain, as well as those that have been developed for non-conventional yeasts. In addition, we will discuss the recent advances employed to develop non-conventional yeast strains that are efficient for the production of a variety of chemicals through the use of metabolic engineering and synthetic biology.
Highlights
The production of biofuels and chemical bioproducts utilizing live cells and their enzymatic conversion pathways, requires less energy than other conversion processes
Gao et al [77], aiming at a better understanding of ethanol production from inulin in K. marxianus, conducted experiments analyzed through RNA-seq, which allowed the identification of genes associated with ethanol metabolism
Synthetic biology has made it possible to control several cellular processes in order to obtain biofuels, the demand for which has increased in recent years
Summary
The production of biofuels and chemical bioproducts utilizing live cells and their enzymatic conversion pathways, requires less energy than other conversion processes. In addition the development of new genome editing tools, such as CRISPR/Cas systems, have facilitated factories [4] Such efforts paved the way for the higher efficiency production of and increased the speed ofhave construction of microbial cellengineering factories [4].ofSuch efforts have paved the way biologically derived chemicals. While most reviews in the literature addressing the engineering and characteristics of yeast for biofuel production focus on the model industrial yeast S. cerevisiae [12,13,14,15,16], there are fewer that have highlighted updated studies of non-conventional yeasts [3,17,18,19] We focus both on the advanced genome editing tools currently available for S. cerevisiae and their adaptation for use in non-model yeast systems to further improve the range and scale of industries for the biological production of chemicals using yeast platforms
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