Designing microbial cell factories for programmable control of cellular metabolism

Synthetic biology has promoted a conceptual shift in metabolic engineering for the microbial production of industrial chemicals toward a sustainable economy. Engineering principles from synthetic biology and metabolic engineering are integrated to redesign cellular metabolism to create microbial cell factories with emerging and programmable functionalities. Combining metabolic engineering with programmed spatial control is a promising approach that enables deep rewiring of microbial cell factory metabolism for the efficient production of bio-based chemicals. In this review, we discuss metabolic compartmentalization approaches for programmable control of cellular metabolism, including intracellular or intercellular partitioning-based organization of biosynthetic pathways. We also examine the designs and applications of cellular compartments and their analogs, highlighting selected examples for creating efficient and sustainable microbial cell factories.