The issues of global warming, coupled with fossil fuel depletion, have undoubtedly led to renewed interest in other sources of commercial fuels. The search for renewable fuels has motivated research into the biological degradation of lignocellulosic biomass feedstock to produce biofuels such as bioethanol, biodiesel, and biohydrogen. The model strain for biofuel production needs the capability to utilize a high amount of substrate, transportation of sugar through fast and deregulated pathways, ability to tolerate inhibitory compounds and end products, and increased metabolic fluxes to produce an improved fermentation product. Engineering microbes might be a great approach to produce biofuel from lignocellulosic biomass by exploiting metabolic pathways economically. Metabolic engineering is an advanced technology for the construction of highly effective microbial cell factories and a key component for the next-generation bioeconomy. It has been extensively used to redirect the biosynthetic pathway to produce desired products in several native or engineered hosts. A wide range of novel compounds has been manufactured through engineering metabolic pathways or endogenous metabolism optimizations by metabolic engineers. This review is focused on the potential utilization of engineered strains to produce biofuel and gives prospects for improvement in metabolic engineering for new strain development using advanced technologies.

中文翻译：

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用于生物燃料生产的微生物菌株的生物勘探：代谢工程、应用和挑战


全球变暖问题，加上化石燃料枯竭，无疑引起了人们对其他商业燃料来源的新兴趣。对可再生燃料的探索推动了对木质纤维素生物质原料的生物降解研究，以生产生物燃料，如生物乙醇、生物柴油和生物氢。用于生物燃料生产的模型菌株需要能够利用大量底物、通过快速且不受管制的途径运输糖、耐受抑制性化合物和最终产物的能力以及增加代谢通量以生产改进的发酵产品。工程微生物可能是通过经济地利用代谢途径从木质纤维素生物质生产生物燃料的好方法。代谢工程是构建高效微生物细胞工厂的先进技术，是下一代生物经济的关键组成部分。它已被广泛用于重定向生物合成途径，以在几种天然或工程宿主中生产所需的产品。代谢工程师通过改造代谢途径或内源代谢优化，生产出了多种新型化合物。本综述的重点是工程菌株生产生物燃料的潜在利用，并展望了利用先进技术改进代谢工程以开发新菌株的前景。