Engineering new metabolic capabilities in bacteria: lessons from recombinant cellulolytic strategies

Cellulose waste biomass is the most attractive substrate for ‘biorefinery strategies’ producing high-value products (e.g. fuels or plastics) by fermentation. However, traditional biomass bioconversions are economically inefficient multistep processes. Thus far, no microorganisms able to perform single-step fermentation into products (consolidated bioprocessing; CBP) have been isolated. Metabolic engineering is currently employed to develop recombinant microorganisms suitable for CBP. The heterologous expression of extracellular proteins (e.g. cellulases or hemicellulases) is the key feature of recombinant cellulolytic strategies, conferring cellulolytic ability to microorganisms exhibiting high product yields and titers. Although more molecular tools are becoming available, efficient heterologous expression of secreted proteins is still a challenge. The present review summarizes both bottlenecks and solutions of organism engineering for biomass biorefinery strategies.