Recent advances in amino acid production by microbial cells

Amino acids have been utilized for the production of foods, animal feeds and pharmaceuticals. After the discovery of the glutamic acid-producing bacterium Cotynebacterium glutamicum by Japanese researchers, the production of amino acids, which are primary metabolites, has been achieved using various microbial cells as hosts. Recently, metabolic engineering studies on the rational design of amino acid producing microbial cells have been successfully conducted. Moreover, the technology of systems biology has been applied to metabolic engineering for the creation of amino acid producing microbial cells. Currently, new technologies including synthetic biology, single-cell analysis, and evolutionary engineering have been utilized to create amino acid-producing microbial cells. In addition, useful compounds from amino acids have been produced by microbial cells. Here, current researches into the metabolic engineering of microbial cells toward production of amino acids and amino acid-related compounds are reviewed.