Development of microbial cell factories for bio-refinery through synthetic bioengineering

Synthetic bioengineering is a strategy for developing useful microbial strains with innovative biological functions. Novel functions are designed and synthesized in host microbes with the aid of advanced technologies for computer simulations of cellular processes and the system-wide manipulation of host genomes. Here, we review the current status and future prospects of synthetic bioengineering in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae for bio-refinery processes to produce various commodity chemicals from lignocellulosic biomass. Previous studies to improve assimilation of xylose and production of glutathione and butanol suggest a fixed pattern of problems that need to be solved, and as a crucial step, we now need to identify promising targets for further engineering of yeast metabolism. Metabolic simulation, transcriptomics, and metabolomics are useful emerging technologies for achieving this goal, making it possible to optimize metabolic pathways. Furthermore, novel genes responsible for target production can be found by analyzing large-scale data. Fine-tuning of enzyme activities is essential in the latter stage of strain development, but it requires detailed modeling of yeast metabolic functions. Recombinant technologies and genetic engineering are crucial for implementing metabolic designs into microbes. In addition to conventional gene manipulation techniques, advanced methods, such as multicistronic expression systems, marker-recycle gene deletion, protein engineering, cell surface display, genome editing, and synthesis of very long DNA fragments, will facilitate advances in synthetic bioengineering.