Progress in metabolic engineering of Corynebacterium glutamicum for succinate production

Abstract:

Succinic acid is an important four-carbon platform compound that is widely applied in the pharmaceutical, agricultural and food industry. Biological processes for succinic acid production show a good prospect for its social, environmental and economic benefits. Corynebacterium glutamicum is broadly used for industrial production of value-added chemicals such as amino acid and nucleotide. Under anaerobic conditions, C. glutamicum cell growth is arrested, but the cells retain the capability to metabolize sugars to various organic acids efficiently. It is thus becoming a desired succinate-production strain by means of metabolic engineering. Combining with the latest achievements of succinic acid production with C. glutamicum, this mini-review summarized the metabolic engineering strategies of constructing an efficient succinate-production strain, the expansions of substrate utilization, and the prospects of future research.