The Actinobacterium Corynebacterium glutamicum, an Industrial Workhorse

Starting as a glutamate producer, Corynebacterium glutamicum has played a variety of roles in the industrial production of amino acids, one of the most important areas of white biotechnology. From shortly after its genome information became available, C. glutamicum has been applied in various production processes for value-added chemicals, fuels, and polymers, as a key organism in industrial biotechnology alongside the surprising progress in systems biology and metabolic engineering. In addition, recent studies have suggested another potential for C. glutamicum as a synthetic biology platform chassis that could move the new era of industrial microbial biotechnology beyond the classical field. Here, we review the recent progress and perspectives in relation to C. glutamicum, which demonstrate it as one of the most promising and valuable workhorses in the field of industrial biotechnology.