[Opportunities and challenges for fermentation optimization and scale-up technology in the artificial intelligence era].

Artificial intelligence (AI) technology is booming up a new industrial revolution, and its successful application is rapidly spreading from the information industry to many other fields. The traditional fermentation industry also faces more opportunities and great challenges for reforming. First of all, the rapid development of synthetic biotechnology has greatly enhanced the availability and efficiency for obtaining high-performance strains, which poses great opportunities to the traditional fermentation optimization and scale-up technology. It is urgent to upgrade fermentation optimization technology to cope with the requirement for high-throughput verification of strain performance. Secondly, the development of fermentation equipment technology has laid a good foundation for advancing fermentation optimization technology. The application of AI technology, especially the digital twin and knowledge graph technology, will further boost the upgrade of the traditional fermentation technology. This review summarizes the challenges of fermentation optimization technology in the era of synthetic biology, the core technology of fermentation optimization and scale-up, the equipment technology of high-throughput fermentation, data visualization technology, as well as the application of digital twin and knowledge graph in fermentation optimization and scale-up. This review also prospects future industrial fermentation technology, and the associated new requirements for personnel training.