Molecular Biosensors for Screening and Regulating Hyper-Producing Cell Factory

Microorganisms have been identified as versatile cell factories for the synthesis of valuable natural products, biofuels, and bulk chemicals. The above biosynthetic processes dependent on intracellular metabolic pathways and enzymes exhibit more advantages (such as sustainable process, high selectivity, and precise modification) than traditional fossil industry. However, it is still challenging to achieve ideal hyper-producing cell factory because of the complicated metabolite concentration measurement, metabolic pathway regulation, and biosynthetic pathway optimization. Fortunately, molecular biosensor can respond to specific metabolites within the cell and convert the molecular recognition into a readable signal that inspires research to artificially control cell metabolism by an elaborate biosensor. In this book chapter, we introduce the basic mechanism and design principles of metabolite-related molecular biosensors. We also summarize the classical application cases of screening and regulating molecular biosensors to create hyper-producing cell factories. Although it poses some challenges, the development of artificial intelligence and synthetic biology approaches will provide more possibilities of using molecular biosensors to achieve ideal yield and productivity in microbial cell factories.