A tunable microbial factory for rare sugar coproduction

Stephan Lane; Yong-Su Jin

doi:10.1016/j.tim.2025.12.007

A tunable microbial factory for rare sugar coproduction

Trends Microbiol. 2026 Feb;34(2):128-129. doi: 10.1016/j.tim.2025.12.007. Epub 2026 Jan 16.

Authors

Stephan Lane¹, Yong-Su Jin²

Affiliations

¹ Department of Food Science, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA.
² Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA; Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA; Centre for Precision Fermentation and Sustainability (PreFerS), Illinois Advanced Research Center in Singapore, Singapore, Singapore. Electronic address: ysjin@illinois.edu.

PMID: 41547641
DOI: 10.1016/j.tim.2025.12.007

Abstract

Palur et al. developed a tunable microbial platform that converts d-glucose into d-sedoheptulose and d-mannose at food-relevant levels. Their platform may be a starting point for exploring the metabolism of additional rare C7 sugars while unlocking a wide array of natural products derived from d-sedoheptulose-7-phosphate.

Keywords: biotransformation; d-sedoheptulose; d-sedoheptulose-7-phosphate; phosphatase; rare sugar.

MeSH terms

Biotransformation
Glucose* / metabolism
Heptoses* / metabolism
Mannose / metabolism
Metabolic Engineering* / methods
Sugar Phosphates / metabolism

Substances

Sugar Phosphates
Glucose
Mannose
sedoheptulose 7-phosphate
Heptoses