A variety of organisms, such as bacteria, fungi, and plants, produce secondary metabolites, also known as natural products. Natural products have been a prolific source and an inspiration for numerous medical agents with widely divergent chemical structures and biological activities, including antimicrobial, immunosuppressive, anticancer, and anti-inflammatory activities, many of which have been developed as treatments and have potential therapeutic applications for human diseases. Aside from natural products, the recent development of recombinant DNA technology has sparked the development of a wide array of biopharmaceutical products, such as recombinant proteins, offering significant advances in treating a broad spectrum of medical illnesses and conditions. Fine chemicals that are physiologically active, such as pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, nutritional supplements, flavoring agents as well as additives for foods, feed, and fertilizer are produced by enzymatically or through microbial fermentation. The identification of enzymes that catalyze the target reaction makes possible to synthesis of the desired fine chemical. The genes encoding these enzymes are then introduced into suitable microbial hosts that are cultured with inexpensive, naturally abundant carbon sources, and other nutrients. Metabolic engineering create efficient microbial cell factories for producing chemicals at higher yields. In the present review, we summarize recent studies on bio-based fine chemical production and assess the potential of synthetic bioengineering for further improvement their productivity.
Mapping the patent landscape of synthetic biology for fine chemical production pathways
