Abstract:Cholesterol is a major sterol compounds accumulating in animals, which has important biological significance and medical application value in maintaining cell membrane function, synthesizing steroid hormones, and producing steroid drug intermediates. Traditionally, cholesterol is obtained by animal tissue extraction, but the whole process is time-consuming and laborious, accompanied by severe environmental pollution. Due to the complex and delicate structure, steroids are difficult to be produced by chemical total synthesis. Most recently, microbial cell factories constructed by synthetic biology have been successfully applied on the biosynthesis and development of natural products, such as terpenoids and sterols. This paper summarized the research progress on cholesterol microbial cell factories, including characterization of cholesterol biosynthesis pathway, selection of chassis strains, mining and optimization of heterologous gene components, and regulation of metabolic pathway, as well as discussed the problems faced by the current research, hoping to provide references for the effective biosynthesis of cholesterol.
