title: Microbial engineering strategies to improve cell viability for biochemical production.
abstract: Efficient production of biochemicals using engineered microbes as whole-cell biocatalysts requires robust cell viability. Robust viability leads to high productivity and improved bioprocesses by allowing repeated cell recycling. However, cell viability is negatively affected by a plethora of stresses, namely chemical toxicity and metabolic imbalances, primarily resulting from bio-synthesis pathways. Chemical toxicity is caused by substrates, intermediates, products, and/or by-products, and these compounds often interfere with important metabolic processes and damage cellular infrastructures such as cell membrane, leading to poor cell viability. Further, stresses on engineered cells are accentuated by metabolic imbalances, which are generated by heavy metabolic resource consumption due to enzyme overexpression, redistribution of metabolic fluxes, and impaired intracellular redox state by co-factor imbalance. To address these challenges, herein, we discuss a range of key microbial engineering strategies, substantiated by recent advances, to improve cell viability for commercially sustainable production of biochemicals from renewable resources.
authors: School of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, 62 Nanyang Drive, Singapore 637459, Singapore.
authors: Tat-Ming
authors: TM
authors: Lo
authors: Wei Suong
authors: WS
authors: Teo
authors: Hua
authors: H
authors: Ling
authors: Binbin
authors: B
authors: Chen
authors: Aram
authors: A
authors: Kang
authors: Matthew Wook
authors: MW
authors: Chang
mesh_terms: D056804:Biofuels; D002462:Cell Membrane / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism; D002470:Cell Survival / Q000235:genetics*; D004926:Escherichia coli / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism*; D006801:Humans; D060847:Metabolic Engineering
chemical_list: D056804:Biofuels
keywords: Bio-catalyst; Growth rates; Metabolic engineering; Microbial production; Productivity; Synthetic biology; Viability