Current status and perspectives of 2-phenylethanol production through biological processes

Abstract

2-Phenylethanol (2-PE), an important flavor and fragrance compound with a rose-like smell has been widely used in the cosmetics, perfume, and food industries. Traditional production of 2-PE was mainly through the extraction from plant materials or by chemical synthesis. However, the increasing demand of consumers for natural flavors cannot be met by these methods. Biological production of 2-PE has emerged to be an appealing solution due to an environmental friendly process and the definition of a “natural” product. In this review, we have comprehensively summarized the current status and perspectives for biological 2-PE production in terms of its advantages over classical chemical synthesis and extraction from natural plants. A comprehensive description of 2-PE synthetic pathways and global regulation mechanisms, strategies to increase 2-PE production, and the utilization of agro-industrial wastes as feedstocks has been systematically discussed. Furthermore, the application of in situ product removal techniques have also been highlighted.

Keywords:

• 2-Phenylethanol
• biological production
• regulatory network
• fermentation process intensification
• agro-industrial wastes
• ISPR techniques

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Jiangsu Province Natural Science Foundation for Youths [BK20170993, BK20170997], the Jiangsu Synergetic Innovation Center for Advanced Bio-Manufacture [XTE1840], the National Natural Science Foundation of China [No. 21706125, No. 21727818, No. 21706124, No. 31700092], the Project of State Key Laboratory of Materials-Oriented Chemical Engineering [KL16-08], the Top-notch Academic Programs Project of Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions [PPZY2015B155, TAPP], and the Project of Evaluation of key technologies for the industrial-scale bio-production of organic acids, Germany.