[Progress in expression regulation of bacterial lipase genes--A review]

Microbial lipases are major sources of commercial ones, which have been extensively used in a wide variety of industrial fields, such as foods, beverages, lipids, detergents, feeds, textiles, leathers, advanced materials, fine chemicals, medicines, cosmetics, papermaking, pollution treatment, and bioenergy. Compared with fungal lipases, bacterial lipases have more types of reactions and exhibit higher activity and better stability in aqueous or organic phases. Amongst bacterial lipases, the most excellent ones are those originating from the genus Pseudomonas. So far, the conventional strategies, such as traditional breeding, optimization of medium and fermentation conditions, cannot fundamentally solve the problem of low production of bacterial lipases. Construction of genetically engineered strains to efficiently overexpress their own lipases is an effective solution. But it must base on clarifying molecular regulation mechanism of lipase gene expression and further finding out key regulators. In this article, we reviewed the progress in expression regulation of bacterial lipase genes from the aspects of direct regulators, quorum sensing system, Gac/Rsm signal transduction system, regulators controlling the Gac/Rsm system, and other regulators. To provide a useful reference for the construction of genetically engineered strains, we also discussed a research prospect in this field based on our ongoing research.