Metabolic engineering can have a pivotal role in increasing the environmental sustainability of the transportation and chemical manufacturing sectors. The field has already developed engineered microorganisms that are currently being used in industrial-scale processes. However, it is often challenging to achieve the titres, yields and productivities required for commercial viability. The efficiency of microbial chemical production is usually dependent on the physiological traits of the host organism, which may either impose limitations on engineered biosynthetic pathways or, conversely, boost their performance. In this Review, we discuss different aspects of microbial physiology that often create obstacles for metabolic engineering, and present solutions to overcome them. We also describe various instances in which natural or engineered physiological traits in host organisms have been harnessed to benefit engineered metabolic pathways for chemical production.

代谢工程可以在提高运输和化学制造部门的环境可持续性方面发挥关键作用。该领域已经开发出工程微生物，目前用于工业规模的过程。然而，实现商业可行性所需的滴度、产量和生产力通常具有挑战性。微生物化学生产的效率通常取决于宿主生物的生理特征，这可能对工程生物合成途径施加限制，或者相反，提高其性能。在这篇综述中，我们讨论了微生物生理学的不同方面，这些方面通常会给代谢工程带来障碍，并提出克服这些障碍的解决方案。