Microbial Production of Fatty Acid via Metabolic Engineering and Synthetic Biology

Abstract

The microbial production of free fatty acids (FFAs) has gained great attention from the scientific community due to its significant environmental and economic benefits. FFAs can also be used as precursors for the production of valuable products, polymer additives and industrial chemicals by various biological or chemical reactions. Since microorganisms synthesize fatty acids (FAs) which are mainly used to form lipids for cell membrane constitution, FFAs are not normally accumulated as metabolic intermediates. FA metabolism is tightly regulated at transcriptional and post-transcriptional levels by both the transcription factor and product inhibition, meaning that FA overproduction may require extensive re-engineering of cellular metabolism. Therefore, we here present the recent efforts applied to enhance FFA production via metabolic engineering and synthetic biology with special reference to Escherichia coli.