The Pathway Less Traveled: Engineering Biosynthesis of Nonstandard Functional Groups

Area of Science:

• Biotechnology
• Metabolic Engineering
• Synthetic Biology

Background:

• Metabolic engineering enables renewable chemical production.
• Current products have limited chemical functional groups.
• Expanding functional group diversity is a key goal.

Purpose of the Study:

• Review the progress of nonstandard functional groups in metabolic engineering.
• Highlight recent advancements in biosynthesis of diverse functional groups.
• Showcase the potential for biologically produced molecules with novel chemical diversity.

Main Methods:

• Overview of biosynthetic machinery elucidation.
• Pathway optimization frameworks in metabolic engineering.
• Literature review of exemplary efforts in the last 5 years.

Main Results:

• Demonstrated biosynthesis of aldehyde, ester, terminal alkyne, terminal alkene, fluoro, epoxide, nitro, nitroso, nitrile, and hydrazine groups.
• Highlighted the varying development stages of these nonstandard functional groups.
• Showcased the growing pipeline of chemical diversity achievable through biological production.

Conclusions:

• Metabolic engineering is expanding the repertoire of accessible chemical functional groups.
• Advances in pathway engineering facilitate the production of complex molecules.
• Future biologically produced chemicals will exhibit greater structural and functional diversity.