1,3-Dihydroxyacetone is widely used in cosmetics, medicines and food products. We reviewed the recent progress in metabolic pathways, key enzymes, as well as metabolic engineering for microbial production of 1,3-dihydroxyacetone. We addressed the research trend to increase yield of 1,3-dihydroxyacetone by improving the activity of glycerol dehydrogenase with genetic engineering, and regulating of fermentation process based on metabolic characteristic of the strain.
Dihydroxyacetone ; biosynthesis ; Fermentation ; Genetic Engineering ; methods ; Gluconobacter oxydans ; genetics ; metabolism ; Industrial Microbiology ; methods ; Metabolic Engineering ; methods ; Sugar Alcohol Dehydrogenases ; metabolism

S-adenosyl-l-methionine (SAM) is ubiquitous in living organisms and plays important roles in transmethylation, transsulfuration and transamination in organisms. Due to its important physiological functions, production of SAM has attracted increasing attentions. Currently, researches on SAM production mainly focus on microbial fermentation, which is more cost-effective than that of the chemical synthesis and the enzyme catalysis, thus easier to achieve commercial production. With the rapid growth in SAM demand, interests in improving SAM production by developing SAM hyper-producing microorganisms aroused. The main strategies for improving SAM productivity of microorganisms include conventional breeding and metabolic engineering. This review summarizes the recent research progress in improving microbial SAM productivity to facilitate further improving SAM productivity. The bottlenecks in SAM biosynthesis and the solutions were also addressed.
S-Adenosylmethionine/metabolism* ; Plant Breeding ; Fermentation ; Metabolic Engineering