Recent progress in metabolic engineering of Corynebacterium glutamicum for the production of C4, C5, and C6 chemicals

Recent environmental problems caused by petroleum-based production of chemicals have accelerated the development of biorefineries for bio-based production of chemicals. Non-pathogenic microorganism, Corynebacterium glutamicum, has extensively been engineered and used as an industrial platform host strain for the commercial production of amino acids, such as l-lysine and L-glutamate. However, only recently has it been developed beyond its use for amino acid production. Recent advances in multiomics approaches, synthetic biology tools and metabolic engineering strategies have enabled the development of recombinant C. glutamicum into a versatile microbial cell factory for bio-based production of value-added platform chemicals and polymers by utilization of a broad range of biomass-derived sugars. In this review, we discuss the recent development of synthetic biology tools and techniques used for the enhancement of C. glutamicum’s ability to utilize renewable resources, specifically lignocellulosic biomass, for the production of platform chemicals with C4-C6 carbon backbone such as C4-isobutanol, 2,3-butanediol, C5-itaconic acid, 3-methyl-1-butanol, 2-methyl-1-butanol and C6-muconic acid.