Metabolic engineering and fermentation of microorganisms for carotenoids production

Carotenoids are natural pigments that exhibit a wide range of red, orange, and yellow colors and are extensively used in the food, nutraceuticals, cosmetics, and aquaculture industries. While advances in systems metabolic engineering have established a foundation for constructing carotenoid-producing microbial cell factories at a laboratory scale, translating these technologies to industrial scales remains a big challenge. Moreover, there is a need to devise cost-effective methods for downstream processing and purification of carotenoids. In this review, we discuss recent strategies in metabolic engineering, such as metabolic flux optimization, enzyme assembly, and storage capacity engineering, aimed at constructing high-performance carotenoid-producing microbial strains. We also review recent approaches for cost-effective downstream processing and purification of carotenoids.