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Updated: May 20, 2026

Light-Controlled Fermentations for Microbial Chemical and Protein Production
Published on: March 22, 2022
Metabolic Engineering of Microbial Cell Factories for Efficient Heme Biosynthesis: Advances, Challenges, and Future
Zhikang Cao1, Xin Zhang1, Shichang Li1
1Key Laboratory of Industrial Fermentation Microbiology, Ministry of Education, Tianjin Key Laboratory of Industrial Microbiology, the College of Biotechnology, Tianjin University of Science and Technology, Tianjin 300457, P. R. China.
Abstract:
Heme is a transformative flavor catalyst for sustainable food systems. This review evaluates recent advances in the metabolic engineering of microbial cell factories, including Escherichia coli, Corynebacterium glutamicum, Bacillus subtilis, Komagataella phaffii, Rhodobacter sphaeroides, and Saccharomyces cerevisiae, for efficient heme biosynthesis. While biosynthetic titers have improved significantly through modular optimization and excretion engineering, heme's stability and functional mechanisms under industrial food processing conditions remain unsystematically reviewed. In this work, we also emphasize the thermomechanical fate and catalytic role of microbial heme during food processing. We analyze how biochemical pathway diversity (PPD, CPD, and SHD routes) informs host-specific engineering strategies while examining heme's stability and its role in oxidative cross-linking of proteins under extreme heat and high shear. This review provides a comprehensive framework for engineering next-generation, high-performance sustainable foods.
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