Abstract
Metabolic engineering combines approaches of synthetic and systems biology for tailoring the existing and creating novel biosynthetic metabolic pathways in the desired industrial microorganisms for production of biofuels, bio-materials and environmental applications. Lactic acid bacteria (LAB) are gaining attention worldwide due to their extensive utilization in food, fermentation and pharmaceutical industries owing to their GRAS status. Well-elucidated genetics and regulatory control of central metabolism make them potential candidates for the production of industrially valuable metabolites. With the recent advancements in metabolic engineering strategies, genetic manipulation and tailoring of cellular metabolism is being successfully carried out in various LAB strains as they are providing highly efficient and industrially competitive robust expression systems. Thus, this review presents a concise overview of metabolic engineering strategies available for the comprehensive tailoring of lactic acid bacterial strains for large-scale production of industrially important metabolites.
•Lactic acid bacteria (LAB) are extensively utilized in food, fermentation and pharmaceutical industries.•Metabolic engineering strategies leads to genetic manipulation and tailoring of cellular metabolism in various LAB strains.•We provide a concise overview of metabolic engineering strategies available for production of important metabolites from LAB strains.