Systematic engineering of microorganisms to improve alcohol tolerance

Microbial production of alcohol is a promising approach for obtaining important chemicals and fuels from renewable carbon resources. One of the key problems associated with the fermentative production of alcohol is alcohol toxicity and/or growth inhibition, resulting in a low alcohol titer in the fermentation broth. Cost-effective production of alcohol needs the scientific community to engineer microbes for increased alcohol tolerance. Here, based on the understanding of the mechanisms of alcohol toxicity and alcohol stress resistance, we review the recent progress in engineering microbial alcohol tolerance by rational approaches. In addition, random approaches including traditional mutagenesis and selection, evolution engineering, random knockout and overexpression libraries, genome shuffling, replicational/transcriptional/translational engineering were also included into this review.