Efficient Biomanufacturing via Microbial Cell Factories or Multi-Enzyme Molecular Machines

Traditional chemical refining is based on non-renewable petroleum resources, having problems of high energy consumption and high pollution. By building efficient microbial cell factories or multi-enzyme molecular machines, renewable biomass resources can be used as raw materials to produce various products. Particularly, with the advances in synthetic biology, genome editing, and cell-free technologies in recent years, these new biological platforms can be created with diverse functions, achieving green and sustainable manufacturing to a large extent and thus greatly promote economic development.

The use of microbial cell factories or multi-enzyme molecular machines for biomanufacturing needs to consider both technological and economic feasibility. To satisfy industrial production metrics TRY (i.e., titer, rate, and yield), it is necessary to consider:

- Designing the synthetic pathways;
- Analyzing and optimizing the multi-enzyme regulations;
- Characterizing of cell physiological performance and metabolic responses;
- Mining enzyme resources and evolving enzyme activities for building novel biocatalysts.

Here, systems biology, evolution engineering, and synthetic biology have to be integrated to construct new microbial cell factories or multi-enzyme molecular machines with a high chance of industrial success.

The purpose of this Research Topic is to highlight the recent progress and trends in the development of efficient biomanufacturing via microbial cell factories or multi-enzyme molecular machines. Manuscript submissions in the related areas are welcome. Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

- Microbial cell factory
- Multi-enzyme molecular machine
- Whole-cell biocatalysis
- Metabolic engineering
- Genome editing
- Enzyme engineering
- Cell-free systems
- Computer-aided strain development and process engineering