Microbial production of nutraceuticals: Challenges and prospects

With the fast development of social economy, seeking for higher living levels and higher health consciousness make nutraceuticals upsurge worldwide. Serving physiological benefits, nutraceuticals act significant part on disease prevention, symptom improvement as well as longevity maintenance. To obtain nutraceuticals with high yield and quality, biosynthesis instead of chemical synthesis has become a safe, efficient and environmentally friendly production system. Owing to GRAS status, several microbes have been developed to synthesize nutraceuticals including vitamins, carotenoids, polyunsaturated fatty acids, exopolysaccharides, and so on. Combining systems and synthetic biology, the molecular mechanisms of nutraceuticals biosynthesis will be studied systematically and comprehensively, and more efficient microbial cell factory will be established for nutraceuticals production.