Carotenoids are a large group of natural pigments, ranging from red, to orange, to yellow colors.
Synthesized by plants and some microorganisms (e.g., microalgae, fungi and bacteria),
carotenoids have important physiological functions (e.g., light harvesting). Apocarotenoids
are carotenoid-derived compounds and play important roles in various biological activities
(e.g., plant hormones). Many carotenoids and apocarotenoids have high economic value
in feed, food, supplements, cosmetics and pharmaceutical industries. Despite high commercial
values, they are severely undersupplied because of low abundance in natural hosts
(usually a few milligrams per kilogram of raw materials). Furthermore, plants or microbes
usually produce mixtures of these molecules with very similar physical and chemical properties
(such as α- and β-carotenes). All these features render the extraction from natural
hosts rather difficult and also very costly both from process economics and sustainable
land-use viewpoints. Chemical synthesis is also expensive due to structural complexity
(e.g., astaxanthin has many unsaturated bonds and two chiral regions). Biotechnology via
the rapidly advancing metabolic engineering and synthetic biology approaches has led to
alternative ways to attain several carotenoids and apocarotenoids at relatively high titers
and yields using fast-growing microorganisms. This chapter briefly reviews the biosynthesis
of carotenoids and apocarotenoids by microorganisms and their industrial potential.
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This research is supported by the BioTransformation Innovation Platform, A*STAR, under its IAFPP programme
(award no H1701a0006)