Microbial Biosurfactants: Genetic, Metabolic, And Systems Biology Perspectives for Sustainable Production

Abstract

Microbial biosurfactants are biomolecules that alter surface tension. They are very important for many industries like food industries, cosmetics and personal cares, oil and gas because they are biodegradable, less toxic, and multifunctional in comparison to synthetic surfactants. This review gives a detailed summary of the genetic, metabolic, and systems biology factors that characterize biosurfactant production. It turns around the great diversity of the chemical structure of biosurfactants, such as glycolipids, lipopeptides, and polymeric bioemulsifiers along with their microbial producers like bacteria, yeasts, fungi, and extremophiles. Production of the above-mentioned compounds is very tightly connected to central metabolic pathways including glycolysis, the tricarboxylic acid cycle, and fatty acid biosynthesis, which provide essential precursors like Acetyl-CoA and NADPH. Biosurfactant synthesis is based on the DNA material, i.e. biosynthetic gene clusters, regulatory networks, and the coordinated gene expression systems at different levels: transcriptional, post-transcriptional, and translational. The regulatory mechanisms like quorum sensing, carbon catabolite repression as well as stress response pathways are leading factors in the optimization of biosurfactant production in different environmental conditions. In support of this, the development of omics technologies and systems biology has enabled the study of biosurfactant production on a global scale; such studies have uncovered metabolic bottlenecks and identified regulatory points. The paper also discusses the contribution of the use of metabolic and genetic engineering tools such as gene overexpression, promoter engineering, pathway knockouts, and heterologous expression to biosurfactant production enhancement and cost reduction. A thorough understanding of the biological system coupled with synthetic biology holds a lot of potential for the sustainable production of biosurfactants and their wide-scale industrial as well as environmental applications.