Advances in Synthetic Biology Tools and Engineering of Corynebacterium glutamicum as a Platform Host for Recombinant Protein Production

Abstract

Corynebacterium glutamicum is a gram-positive and non-pathogenic microorganism that has traditionally been used as a major host for amino acid production. With the rapid increase in demand for high-value bioindustrial and pharmaceutically-relevant proteins, C. glutamicum has also gained significant interest as an attractive host for the production of recombinant proteins owing to several advantages over other microbial hosts, including Escherichia coli. As an emerging technology, various synthetic biology tools have been developed and successfully used to design and engineer C. glutamicum cells, making this microorganism a promising cell factory in the bioindustry field. In this review, we first summarize the synthetic biology tools for genome editing, synthetic parts for gene expression and regulation (i.e., promoters, ribosome binding sites, and bicistronic system), plasmids, and chassis, which have been intensively used for designing optimal expression constructs for C. glutamicum. Subsequently, as applications of synthetic biology tools, we discuss the extensive engineering of C. glutamicum as a potential platform for the secretory production of recombinant proteins.