The bright frontiers of microbial metabolic optogenetics

Scott A Wegner; Rachel M Barocio-Galindo; José L Avalos

doi:10.1016/j.cbpa.2022.102207

The bright frontiers of microbial metabolic optogenetics

Curr Opin Chem Biol. 2022 Dec:71:102207. doi: 10.1016/j.cbpa.2022.102207. Epub 2022 Sep 11.

Authors

Scott A Wegner¹, Rachel M Barocio-Galindo², José L Avalos³

Affiliations

¹ Department of Molecular Biology, USA.
² Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, USA.
³ Department of Molecular Biology, USA; Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, USA; The Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment, USA; High Meadows Environmental Institute, Princeton University, Princeton NJ 08544, USA. Electronic address: javalos@princeton.edu.

PMID: 36103753
DOI: 10.1016/j.cbpa.2022.102207

Abstract

In recent years, light-responsive systems from the field of optogenetics have been applied to several areas of metabolic engineering with remarkable success. By taking advantage of light's high tunability, reversibility, and orthogonality to host endogenous processes, optogenetic systems have enabled unprecedented dynamical controls of microbial fermentations for chemical production, metabolic flux analysis, and population compositions in co-cultures. In this article, we share our opinions on the current state of this new field of metabolic optogenetics.We make the case that it will continue to impact metabolic engineering in increasingly new directions, with the potential to challenge existing paradigms for metabolic pathway and strain optimization as well as bioreactor operation.

Keywords: Biosensors; Control; Cybergenetics; DBTL; Dynamic control of microbial fermentations: Design build test learn cycle; MMME; Metabolic engineering; Multivariate modular metabolic engineering; Optogenetics.

Publication types

Review
Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural
Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.

MeSH terms

Fermentation
Metabolic Engineering*
Metabolic Networks and Pathways
Optogenetics*