Solvent Tolerance in Bacteria: Fulfilling the Promise of the Biotech Era?

• Published in: Trends in biotechnology (Regular ed.) Vol. 36; no. 10; pp. 1025 - 1039
• Main Authors: Kusumawardhani, Hadiastri, Hosseini, Rohola, de Winde, Johannes H.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England Elsevier Ltd 01.10.2018; Elsevier Limited
• Subjects: Anti-Bacterial Agents - toxicity; Bacteria; Bacteria - drug effects; Bacteria - isolation & purification; Biocatalysts; Biopolymers; Biotechnology; Chemical compounds; E coli; Fatty acids; Gene expression; Genome engineering; Gram-negative bacteria; Hydrocarbons; industrial biotechnology; Industrial Microbiology - methods; Industrial strains; Lipids; Metabolism; Microbial Viability - drug effects; Microorganisms; Molecular modelling; Organic chemistry; Permeability; Phenols; Physiology; Product development; solvent tolerance; Solvents; Solvents - toxicity; Synthetic biology; solvent tolerance; synthetic biology; Genome engineering; industrial biotechnology
• ISSN: 0167-7799; 1879-3096
• DOI: 10.1016/j.tibtech.2018.04.007

The challenge of sustainably producing highly valuable chemical compounds requires specialized microbial cell factories because many of these compounds can be toxic to microbial hosts. Therefore, solvent-tolerant bacteria are promising production hosts because of their intrinsic tolerance towards these compounds. Recent studies have helped to elucidate the molecular mechanisms involved in solvent tolerance. Advances in synthetic biological tools will enable further development of streamlined solvent-tolerant production hosts and the transfer of solvent-tolerant traits to established industrial strains. In this review, we outline challenges and opportunities to implement solvent tolerance in bacteria as a desired trait for industrial biotechnology. Solvent-tolerant bacteria are promising platform cell factories for biobased production of a plethora of high-value aromatic compounds and biopolymer constituents. Solvent tolerance traits are advantageous for microbial platforms in biocatalysis of aromatic compounds to overcome product and substrate toxicity. Solvent-tolerant bacteria are well equipped for biocatalysis of high-value compounds in two-phase biocatalysis systems, leading to significant improvement of production yields. Synthetic construction and development of standardized genome editing tools, such as SEVA, BioBricks, and CRISPR/Cas will enable rapid engineering and optimization of solvent-tolerant cell factories. Genome streamlining is a promising strategy to solve host interference issues that often lead to lower product yields.