Pseudomonas putida in the quest of programmable chemistry

Traditional microbial biotechnology is in the midst of a profound transformation brought about not only by many conceptual and technical breakthroughs (e.g. systems and synthetic biology, the CRISPR revolution) but also by the major change of socioeconomic context generically known as the 4th Industrial Revolution. Owing to its naturally evolved properties of stress endurance, metabolic versatility, and physiological robustness the soil bacterium Pseudomonas putida has recently received a considerable attention as the basis for developing whole-cell catalysts. The review below sketches the ongoing journey of this bacterium from being a soil-dweller, root-colonizer microbe all the way to become a programmable catalyst for executing complex biotransformations at very different scales having in the background the contemporary developments in non-biological programmable chemistry.