Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2025 May 26;41(6):184.
doi: 10.1007/s11274-025-04415-6.

Research progress and development prospects of microbial synthesis of ergothioneine

Zhixiao Lei #  1 , Yifan Feng #  1 , Wenming Zhang  1   2 , Yujia Jiang  1 , Minjiao Chen  1 , Wankui Jiang  3 , Fengxue Xin  4   5
Affiliations
Review

Research progress and development prospects of microbial synthesis of ergothioneine

Zhixiao Lei et al. World J Microbiol Biotechnol. .

Abstract

Ergothioneine (Egt) is a rare sulfur-containing amino acid widely distributed in edible fungi and bacteria. As a natural antioxidant, Egt has demonstrated significant application potential in the food, pharmaceutical, and cosmetic industries. However, conventional Egt production predominantly relies on chemical synthesis and biological extraction methods, which suffer from low titers and cannot meet the escalating market demand. With advances in synthetic biology, genetic engineering of suitable microbial chassis strains coupled with fermentation process optimization has emerged as a research hotspot for enhancing Egt biosynthesis efficiency. This review systematically examines Egt's applications, metabolic pathways, microbial synthesis strategies, and fermentation optimization approaches, while also prospecting future research directions and technical challenges in Egt production.

Keywords: Ergothioneine; Fermentation engineering; Genetic engineering; Synthetic biology.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Declarations. Competing interests: The authors declare no competing interests.

Similar articles

See all similar articles

References

    1. Alamgir KM, Masuda S, Fujitani Y, Fukuda F, Tani A (2015) Production of ergothioneine by Methylobacterium species. Front Microbiol 6
    1. Banerjee D, Eng T, Lau AK, Sasaki Y, Wang B, Chen Y, Prahl JP, Singan VR, Herbert RA, Liu YZ et al (2020) Genome-scale metabolic rewiring improves titers rates and yields of the non-native product indigoidine at scale. Nat Commun 11:11
    1. Bao HND, Ushio H, Ohshima T (2008) Antioxidative activity and antidiscoloration efficacy of ergothioneine in mushroom (Flammulina velutipes) extract added to beef and fish meats. J Agric Food Chem 56:10032–10040 - PubMed
    1. Bazela K, Solyga-Zurek A, Debowska R, Rogiewicz K, Bartnik E, Eris IJC (2014) l-Ergothioneine protects skin cells against UV-Induced Damage—A preliminary study. 1:51–60
    1. Bhattacharya M, Srivastav PP, Mishra HN (2014) Optimization of process variables for supercritical fluid extraction of ergothioneine and polyphenols from Pleurotus ostreatus and correlation to free-radical scavenging activity. J Supercrit Fluids 95:51–59

LinkOut - more resources