Metabolic engineering strategies for acetoin and 2,3-butanediol production: advances and prospects

Abstract

Acetoin and 2,3-butanediol (2,3-BD) have a large number of industrial applications. The production of acetoin and 2,3-BD has traditionally relied on oil supplies. Microbial production of acetoin and 2,3-BD will alleviate the dependence on oil. Acetoin and 2,3-BD are neighboring metabolites in the 2,3-BD metabolic pathway of bacteria. This review summarizes metabolic engineering strategies for improvement of microbial acetoin and 2,3-BD production. We also propose enhancements to current acetoin and 2,3-BD production strategies, by offering a metabolic engineering approach that is guided by systems biology and synthetic biology.

Keywords:

• Strain improvement
• 2,3-butanediol dehydrogenase
• regulation mechanism
• biotechnological production
• cofactor engineering
• low-cost substrate
• gene knockout
• construction

Disclosure statement

The authors report no declarations of interest.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the High-tech Research and Development Programs of China [2015AA021004], the National Natural Science Foundation of China [31400082, 31500065, 31570085], the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province [BK20161292, BK20150142], the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation Funded Project [2016T90421], Jiangsu Province Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars [BK20150002], and the 111 Project [111–2-06].