Frontiers of yeast metabolic engineering: diversifying beyond ethanol and Saccharomyces

Abstract

Microbial systems provide an attractive, renewable route to produce desired organic molecules such as fuels and chemicals. While attention within the field of metabolic engineering has mostly focused on Escherichia coli, yeast is a potent host and growing host for industrial products and has many outstanding, biotechnologically desirable native traits. Thus, there has been a recent shift in focus toward yeast as production hosts to replace E. coli. As such, products have diversified in yeast beyond simply ethanol. Additionally, nonconventional yeasts have been considered to move beyond Saccharomyces cerevisiae. This review highlights recent advances in metabolic engineering of yeasts for producing value-added chemical compounds including alcohols, sugar derivatives, organic acids, fats, terpenes, aromatics, and polyketides. Furthermore, we will also discuss the future direction of metabolic engineering of yeasts.