Vavitsas Konstantinos, Fabris Michele, Vickers Claudia E
Australian Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD 4072, Australia.
CSIRO Synthetic Biology Future Science Platform, GPO Box 2583, Brisbane, QLD 4001, Australia.
Genes (Basel). 2018 Oct 23;9(11):520. doi: 10.3390/genes9110520.
Terpenoids are a group of natural products that have a variety of roles, both essential and non-essential, in metabolism and in biotic and abiotic interactions, as well as commercial applications such as pharmaceuticals, food additives, and chemical feedstocks. Economic viability for commercial applications is commonly not achievable by using natural source organisms or chemical synthesis. Engineered bio-production in suitable heterologous hosts is often required to achieve commercial viability. However, our poor understanding of regulatory mechanisms and other biochemical processes makes obtaining efficient conversion yields from feedstocks challenging. Moreover, production from carbon dioxide via photosynthesis would significantly increase the environmental and potentially the economic credentials of these processes by disintermediating biomass feedstocks. In this paper, we briefly review terpenoid metabolism, outline some recent advances in terpenoid metabolic engineering, and discuss why photosynthetic unicellular organisms-such as algae and cyanobacteria-might be preferred production platforms for the expression of some of the more challenging terpenoid pathways.
萜类化合物是一类天然产物，在新陈代谢以及生物和非生物相互作用中具有多种作用，包括必需和非必需的作用，同时还具有商业应用，如药物、食品添加剂和化学原料。使用天然来源的生物体或化学合成通常无法实现商业应用的经济可行性。通常需要在合适的异源宿主中进行工程化生物生产才能实现商业可行性。然而，我们对调控机制和其他生化过程的了解不足，使得从原料中获得高效转化率具有挑战性。此外，通过光合作用从二氧化碳进行生产将通过去除生物质原料，显著提高这些过程的环境和潜在经济价值。在本文中，我们简要回顾萜类化合物代谢，概述萜类化合物代谢工程的一些最新进展，并讨论为什么光合单细胞生物——如藻类和蓝细菌——可能是表达一些更具挑战性的萜类化合物途径的首选生产平台。
