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Updated: Jun 23, 2026

HKUST-1 as a Heterogeneous Catalyst for the Synthesis of Vanillin
Published on: July 23, 2016
Genetic Engineering Approaches for the Microbial Production of Vanillin
Luísa D F Santos1, Sylvie Lautru1, Jean-Luc Pernodet1
1CEA, CNRS, Institute for Integrative Biology of the Cell (I2BC), Université Paris-Saclay, 91198 Gif-sur-Yvette, France.
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Vanilla flavour is widely used in various industries and is the most broadly used flavouring agent in the food industry. The demand for this flavour is, therefore, extremely high, yet vanilla bean extracts can only meet about 1% of the overall demand. Vanillin, the main constituent of vanilla flavour, can easily be obtained through chemical synthesis. Nonetheless, consumer demands for natural products and environmentally friendly industrial processes drive the development of biotechnological approaches for its production. Some microorganisms can naturally produce vanillin when fed with various substrates, including eugenol, isoeugenol, and ferulic acid. The characterisation of the genes and enzymes involved in these bioconversion pathways, as well as progress in the understanding of vanillin biosynthesis in Vanilla orchids, allowed the development of genetic engineering and synthetic biology approaches to increase vanillin production in naturally vanillin-producing microorganisms, or to implement novel vanillin biosynthetic pathways in microbial chassis. This review summarises and discusses these genetic engineering and synthetic biology approaches for the microbial production of vanillin.
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