Microbial Host Engineering: beyond the Metabolic Pathway

As the focus of microbial metabolic engineering shifts to include bulk commodities, two aspects of this research have become increasingly important. One is the requirement for high production titers in order to make the process economically viable. The second is to engineer microbes that are tolerant to these target products, many of which are toxic to cell growth. This review focuses on recent advances in the bacterial production of bulk products such as biofuels, the resources available to aid in targeted strain engineering and future directions being pursued for such efforts. ARTICLE