Dear Colleagues,

Microbial fermentation processes have been used extensively in the production of various foods, bio-based chemicals, biopharmaceuticals, biofuels and other commercial products, various types of microorganisms are used for large-scale production in microbial fermentation, including natural mutant strains and genetically engineered strains of Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Escherichia coli, Bacillus subtilis, Actinomycetes, Aspergillus niger, etc. These industrial microorganisms possess a broad variety of enzymes to make different bioconversions possible, and they also have relatively high metabolic activities that permit a series of biotransformation or bioreactions to take place rapidly. It is hoped that industrial microorganisms could grow quickly on media made of cheap raw materials, synthesize the target products rapidly and efficiently, be easy to maintain and cultivate to ensure the stability of fermentation production and product quality, and should have genetic stability with infrequent mutations.

To improve industrial production, the metabolic mechanism, metabolic pathway and metabolic regulation of industrial microorganisms should be clarified in depth. Microbial metabolic engineering and microbial-based synthetic biology are powerful and eco-friendly approaches for the production of high-value products from sustainable carbon sources. The performance of industrial strains can be improved by constructing efficient synthetic pathways, regulating the metabolic networks, enhancing pathway metabolic fluxes, reforming medium composition, cofactor and precursor supply, carrying out directed evolution to improve enzyme activity, etc. With the continuous progress and application of metabolic engineering, multi-omics technology, synthetic biology and other methods, the metabolic mechanism of industrial microorganisms will be clearly revealed, and the microbial cell factories will realize green production with high efficiency.

The scope of this Special Issue is to address the potential and challenges to improve the metabolic ability of various industrial microorganisms. This Special Issue will cover topics related to the microbial metabolic engineering, microbial fermentation, metabolic regulation, metabolomics, metabolic flux analysis, design and construction of metabolic pathway, metabolic network and microbial cell factory. These studies will help people make use of various metabolic research strategies, fully achieve the metabolic potential of industrial microbial strains.

Prof. Dr. Xuehong Zhang
Prof. Dr. Xin-Qing Zhao
Dr. Kai Li
Guest Editors

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• microbial metabolic engineering
• microbial fermentation
• industrial microorganisms
• microbial cell factory
• metabolic regulation
• metabolic network
• metabolic flux analysis
• metabolic pathway
• metabolomics
• synthetic biology
• applied microbiology
• industrial production
• biofuels and biochemicals
• bioactive compounds