With the increasing concerns on depletion of fossil resources and climate challenges, industrial biotechnology is considered a promising alternative to address the pressing issues including energy and resource shortage as well as climate change, so as to achieve sustainable development of the society. Owning to the theoretical advances, technological breakthroughs, and multidisciplinary convergence, the past two decades have seen rapid development of industrial biotechnology driven by the disruptive advances of life sciences, the merging of multidisciplinary technologies and concepts, and the commercial and industrial demands. This article briefly illustrated the history and the recent breakthroughs of industrial biotechnology and prospected a long-term perspective for its future direction.
Keywords: biotechnology; engineering biology; industrial biotechnology; metabolic engineering.