Key Laboratory of Industrial Biotechnology, Ministry of Education, School of Biotechnology, Jiangnan University, Wuxi, Jiangsu Province, 214122, China.
National Engineering Laboratory for Cereal Fermentation Technology, Jiangnan University, 1800 Lihu Avenue, Wuxi, Jiangsu Province, 214122, China.
Microb Biotechnol. 2021 Nov;14(6):2257-2278. doi: 10.1111/1751-7915.13743. Epub 2021 Jan 18.
Small peptides are a group of natural products with low molecular weights and complex structures. The diverse structures of small peptides endow them with broad bioactivities and suggest their potential therapeutic use in the medical field. The remaining challenge is methods to address the main limitations, namely (i) the low amount of available small peptides from natural sources, and (ii) complex processes required for traditional chemical synthesis. Therefore, harnessing microbial cells as workhorse appears to be a promising approach to synthesize these bioactive peptides. As an emerging engineering technology, synthetic biology aims to create standard, well-characterized and controllable synthetic systems for the biosynthesis of natural products. In this review, we describe the recent developments in the microbial production of small peptides. More importantly, synthetic biology approaches are considered for the production of small peptides, with an emphasis on chassis cells, the evolution of biosynthetic pathways, strain improvements and fermentation.
小肽是一组具有低分子量和复杂结构的天然产物。小肽的多样结构赋予它们广泛的生物活性，并暗示它们在医学领域有潜在的治疗用途。目前面临的主要挑战是解决以下两个问题的方法：（i）从天然来源获得的小肽数量有限，（ii）传统化学合成所需的复杂过程。因此，利用微生物细胞作为“工作载体”似乎是合成这些生物活性肽的一种很有前途的方法。作为一种新兴的工程技术，合成生物学旨在为天然产物的生物合成创建标准、特征明确且可控的合成系统。在这篇综述中，我们描述了微生物生产小肽的最新进展。更重要的是，考虑了合成生物学方法来生产小肽，重点介绍底盘细胞、生物合成途径的进化、菌株改良和发酵。
