About this Research Topic
Metabolic engineering enables the production of a variety of valuable compounds ranging from natural products to commodity chemicals in microbial cell factories. In the processes of constructing efficient microbial cell factories, genetically encoded biosensors, such as allosteric transcriptional factors and riboswitches, have emerged as promising toolsets for assisting metabolic engineering, largely due to their ability to monitor the cellular status or environmental signals in a real-time manner. For example, biosensor-based dynamic pathway regulation programs cells to smartly rewire metabolic fluxes for minimized competition between production and cell growth. Biosensor-assisted high-throughput screening enabled the fast selection of over-producing strains or highly efficient enzyme variants. As a result, biosensor-based strategies are becoming increasingly important in engineering microbial systems for the production of value-added compounds at high titer, yield, and productivity.
In this research topic, we want to collect recent progress in engineering genetically encoded biosensors and applying the engineered biosensors to assist in the establishment of highly efficient microbial cell factories. Intelligent genetic circuit designs, effective regulation strategies, novel biosensor-based high-throughput screening methods, and future perspectives on developing efficient microbial cell factories with the help of biosensors will be particularly focused on in this Research Topic. Also, as the application scenarios of the biosensor-enabled metabolic engineering strategies strongly rely on biosensor availability, research efforts for the discovery, mining, characterization, and engineering of biosensors are also welcomed in this Research Topic.
This Research Topic is intended to collect Original Research articles, Methods articles, Reviews, Mini-reviews, Perspective, and Opinion articles. The following topics are particularly welcome (but not limited to):
• The mining, discovery, characterization, and engineering of novel biosensor systems that can serve for metabolic engineering and synthetic biology applications.
• Establishing biosensor-based genetic circuits or control systems for programmable metabolic flux rewiring or cellular behavior to improve biosynthesis efficiencies.
• Involving biosensors in high-throughput screening of hyper-producing strains or enzyme variants to establish highly efficient microbial cell factories.
• Other applications in metabolic engineering or synthetic biology that involves the utilization of genetically encoded biosensors.
In this research topic, we want to collect recent progress in engineering genetically encoded biosensors and applying the engineered biosensors to assist in the establishment of highly efficient microbial cell factories. Intelligent genetic circuit designs, effective regulation strategies, novel biosensor-based high-throughput screening methods, and future perspectives on developing efficient microbial cell factories with the help of biosensors will be particularly focused on in this Research Topic. Also, as the application scenarios of the biosensor-enabled metabolic engineering strategies strongly rely on biosensor availability, research efforts for the discovery, mining, characterization, and engineering of biosensors are also welcomed in this Research Topic.
This Research Topic is intended to collect Original Research articles, Methods articles, Reviews, Mini-reviews, Perspective, and Opinion articles. The following topics are particularly welcome (but not limited to):
• The mining, discovery, characterization, and engineering of novel biosensor systems that can serve for metabolic engineering and synthetic biology applications.
• Establishing biosensor-based genetic circuits or control systems for programmable metabolic flux rewiring or cellular behavior to improve biosynthesis efficiencies.
• Involving biosensors in high-throughput screening of hyper-producing strains or enzyme variants to establish highly efficient microbial cell factories.
• Other applications in metabolic engineering or synthetic biology that involves the utilization of genetically encoded biosensors.
Keywords: biosensors, metabolic engineering, synthetic biology, dynamic pathway regulation, high-throughput screening, transcriptional factors.
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.
