酵素工学
オープンアクセス

概要

The Role of GroE Chaperonins in Developing Biocatalysts for Biofuel and Chemical Production

Peng-Fei Xia, Timothy Lee Turner and Lahiru N Jayakody

As the need and interest for producing renewable biofuels and biochemical has grown, new avenues to improve product yields and productivity have been explored. Specifically, improving the tolerance of host microbes towards stressors, such as heat shock or the presence of harmful solvents, has been an especially important route to improve industrial-scale chemical production. In this review, we discuss recent advances in microbial engineering for renewable chemical production through the introduction and expression of chaperonins, especially the bacterial GroE complex. The GroE complex provides a closed-off environment and allows vital proteins to enter and engage in post-translational folding or refolding in a more-ideal environment, allowing the microbe to possess increased survival rates in low/high temperatures or in high concentrations of otherwise harmful end-products. Overall, we highlighted how chaperonin systems such as the GroE complex could have many industrially-relevant uses in the coming years.