Amino acids, are the building-blocks of proteins which are extensively used in the pharmaceutical, food and chemical industries. The world amino acid market is worth several billion dollars. In addition, amino acids are the precursor for the production of several important chemicals. For example, L-glutathione, a non-protein thiol compound with important biological properties, is a tripeptide that consists of three kinds of amino acids, and is widely used in pharmaceutical, food, cosmetic and health products. Therefore, the methods involved in the production of amino acids and their derived products are regarded as an active field in biotechnology. However, due to the lack of efficient technology and engineered strains, the productivity and cost of many amino acids, such as L-histidine, L-serine, and L-aspartate, are too high to meet the requirements of industrialization. The development of efficient methods to produce high performing amino acids from sustainable feedstocks has attracted increased interest from researchers worldwide in the past decade.
Now, most amino acids are produced by microbial fermentation and enzymic methods. Meanwhile, developments in metabolic engineering and synthetic biology, such as CRISPR-cas9 assisted gene editing and RNAi, can provide more effective strategies to construct robust microbial cell factories for amino acid biosynthesis with high titer, yield, and productivity.
This Research Topic aims to introduce current advancements in the biosynthesis of amino acids and their derived products from renewable feedstocks. Authors are invited to contribute Original Research articles, as well as Review articles that provide a comprehensive discussion and analysis of the current success and future outlooks for biosynthesis of various organic acids.
The themes covered in this Research Topic include the production of amino acids and their derived products in relation, but not restricted to:
1. Biological and chemical catalytic production
2. Design and construction of new molecular pathways for amino acid production
3. Application of metabolic engineering and synthetic biology strategies
4. Scale up of the production process for industrial applications
5. New developments in separation technology for bio-products
Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.
We would like to acknowledge
Dr. Bin Zhang as the Co-ordinator for this Research Topic.