Currently, synthetic biology approaches have been developed for constructing microbial cell factories capable of efficient synthesis of high value-added products. Most studies have focused on the construction of novel biosynthetic pathways and their regulatory processes. Morphology engineering has recently been proposed as a novel strategy for constructing efficient microbial cell factories, which aims at controlling cell shape and cell division pattern by manipulating the cell morphology-related genes. Morphology engineering strategies have been exploited for improving bacterial growth rate, enlarging cell volume and simplifying downstream separation. This mini-review summarizes cell morphology-related proteins and their function, current advances in manipulation tools and strategies of morphology engineering, and practical applications of morphology engineering for enhanced production of intracellular product polyhydroxyalkanoate and extracellular products. Furthermore, current limitations and the future development direction using morphology engineering are proposed.

中文翻译：

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形态工程：构建微生物细胞工厂的新策略

目前，已经开发出合成生物学方法来构建能够高效合成高附加值产品的微生物细胞工厂。大多数研究都集中在新型生物合成途径的构建及其调控过程上。最近有人提出形态学工程作为构建高效微生物细胞工厂的新策略，其目的是通过操纵细胞形态相关基因来控制细胞形状和细胞分裂模式。形态学工程策略已被用于提高细菌生长速度、扩大细胞体积和简化下游分离。这篇小型综述总结了细胞形态相关蛋白及其功能、操作工具和形态工程策略的当前进展、形态工程在细胞内产物聚羟基链烷酸酯和细胞外产物的增强生产中的实际应用。此外，提出了使用形态学工程的当前局限性和未来发展方向。