Engineering cell factories for producing building block chemicals for bio-polymer synthesis

TLDR

Synthetic polymers are widely used, but environmental concerns and oil depletion drive the development of microbial fermentation to produce polymer building blocks from renewable resources, with recent metabolic engineering advances enabling high‑yield biosynthesis of both aliphatic and aromatic monomers. The review aims to summarize recent progress in metabolic engineering strategies that optimize microbial strains for producing building blocks for aliphatic and high‑performance aromatic polymers. The authors survey metabolic engineering approaches that redirect carbon flux in microbes toward target monomers, thereby enhancing yield and productivity. Microbial strains engineered with these methods successfully produce monomer chemicals that can replace traditional petroleum‑derived aliphatic polymers.

Abstract

Synthetic polymers are widely used in daily life. Due to increasing environmental concerns related to global warming and the depletion of oil reserves, the development of microbial-based fermentation processes for the production of polymer building block chemicals from renewable resources is desirable to replace current petroleum-based methods. To this end, strains that efficiently produce the target chemicals at high yields and productivity are needed. Recent advances in metabolic engineering have enabled the biosynthesis of polymer compounds at high yield and productivities by governing the carbon flux towards the target chemicals. Using these methods, microbial strains have been engineered to produce monomer chemicals for replacing traditional petroleum-derived aliphatic polymers. These developments also raise the possibility of microbial production of aromatic chemicals for synthesizing high-performance polymers with desirable properties, such as ultraviolet absorbance, high thermal resistance, and mechanical strength. In the present review, we summarize recent progress in metabolic engineering approaches to optimize microbial strains for producing building blocks to synthesize aliphatic and high-performance aromatic polymers.