Next-Generation Industrial Biotechnology-Transforming the Current Industrial Biotechnology into Competitive Processes

The chemical industry has made a contribution to modern society by providing cost-competitive products for our daily use. However, it now faces a serious challenge regarding environmental pollutions and greenhouse gas emission. With the rapid development of molecular biology, biochemistry, and synthetic biology, industrial biotechnology has evolved to become more efficient for production of chemicals and materials. However, in contrast to chemical industries, current industrial biotechnology (CIB) is still not competitive for production of chemicals, materials, and biofuels due to their low efficiency and complicated sterilization processes as well as high-energy consumption. It must be further developed into "next-generation industrial biotechnology" (NGIB), which is low-cost mixed substrates based on less freshwater consumption, energy-saving, and long-lasting open continuous intelligent processing, overcoming the shortcomings of CIB and transforming the CIB into competitive processes. Contamination-resistant microorganism as chassis is the key to a successful NGIB, which requires resistance to microbial or phage contaminations, and available tools and methods for metabolic or synthetic biology engineering. This review proposes a list of contamination-resistant bacteria and takes Halomonas spp. as an example for the production of a variety of products, including polyhydroxyalkanoates under open- and continuous-processing conditions proposed for NGIB.