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Deciphering bacterial xylose metabolism and metabolic engineering of industrial microorganisms for use as efficient microbial cell factories

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Abstract

The goal of sustainable production of biochemicals and biofuels has driven the engineering of microbial cell as factories that convert low-value substrates to high-value products. Xylose is the second most abundant sugar substrate in lignocellulosic hydrolysates. We analyzed the mechanisms of xylose metabolism using genome sequencing data of 492 industrially relevant bacterial species in the mini-review. The analysis revealed the xylose isomerase and Weimberg pathways as the major routes across diverse routes of bacterial xylose metabolism. In addition, we discuss recent developments in metabolic engineering of xylose metabolism in industrial microorganisms. Genome-scale analyses have revealed xylose pathway-specific flux landscapes. Overall, a comprehensive understanding of bacterial xylose metabolism could be useful for the feasible development of microbial cell factories.

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Acknowledgements

The authors appreciate fruitful discussions with Mr. Jungseok Lee, Ms. Suah Jo, and Mr. Seung Soo Lee. Also, the authors appreciate helpful discussions with Ms. Ina Bang.

Funding

This work was supported by Korea CCS R&D Center (KCRC) (2017M1A8A1072034) and Basic Science Research Program (2017R1A2B2002566) through the National Research Foundation of Korea, funded by the Korean Government (Ministry of Science and ICT). In addition, this work was partially supported by the Golden Seed Project (213008-05-2-WT911) grant, funded by the Ministry of Agriculture and the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries. Financial support from the CJ Grant Program (CG-20-16-01-0003) is gratefully acknowledged.

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  1. School of Energy and Chemical Engineering and School of Biological Sciences, Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology, 50 UNIST-gil, Ulsan, 44919, Republic of Korea

    Donghyuk Kim

  2. Department of Food Science and Biotechnology, Sungkyunkwan University (SKKU), 2066 Seobu-ro, Jangan-gu, Suwon, 16419, Republic of Korea

    Han Min Woo

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  1. Donghyuk Kim
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Correspondence to Han Min Woo.

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Kim, D., Woo, H.M. Deciphering bacterial xylose metabolism and metabolic engineering of industrial microorganisms for use as efficient microbial cell factories. Appl Microbiol Biotechnol 102, 9471–9480 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-018-9353-2

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