Facing the dual challenges of a growing global population and increasingly severe resource and environmental constraints, the modern food/feed system is undergoing a profound transformation. Synthetic biology, as an emerging interdisciplinary technology that combines molecular biology, genetic engineering, engineering, and computer science, has become a core driving force for this transformation. By redesigning and reconstructing synthetic biological systems, synthetic biology and engineering biology break through the limitations of traditional food production modes, providing innovative solutions for the sustainable, energy-efficient, cost-competitive, and healthy development of the future food industry. This journal has launched a special issue “Bridging Synthetic Biology and Food: Modern Fermentation Engineering” to focus on the latest research progress in this field. This editorial of Food Bioengineering systematically summarizes the integration of synthetic biology and the food field, focusing on its application scenarios, existing challenges, and future development trends, based on latest and representative advances. Core value of synthetic biology differs from traditional biotechnology in its ability to design and construct in vivo, in vitro, and ex vivo synthetic biological systems with predictable functions from scratch or to reconstruct existing biological systems for better functions. The integration with synthetic biology and the food field has prominent core values. (1) It would break through natural resource constraints, decreasing reliance on traditional plant and animal feedstocks by using microbial cell factories or multiple-enzyme molecular machines (MEMMs) to synthesize food components, thereby alleviating the pressure on land, water, and other agricultural resources. (2) It would achieve green and low-carbon biomanufacturing by minimizing carbon emissions during its biomanufacturing or utilizing sustainable resources as feedstocks, and promoting the circular bioeconomy. (3) It would improve food quality and safety, enabling the production of food ingredients with the less waste and of customized nutritional products to meet diverse consumer demands. (4) It would accelerate technological innovation, shortening the research and development cycle of food products and promoting the upgrading of the food industry. Synthetic biology has been widely applied in the biomanufacturing of food/feed basic raw materials and auxiliary materials, covering proteins, carbohydrates, lipids, food additives, and other products. Starch, as the main carbon and energy source for humans and non-ruminant livestock, has long relied on traditional crop planting, which is greatly affected by climate changes and limited by arable lands and water irrigation. The Tianjin Institute of Industrial Biotechnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, has developed three innovative routes to make synthetic starch. (1) They developed a chemo-enzymatic coupling method to synthesize starch from CO₂ and H₂, with a productivity rate of 8.5 times higher than that in corn (Cai et al. 2021). (2) The engineered Yarrowia lipolytica can efficiently accumulate starch microcrystals, accounting for 47.2% of the bacterial mass, when using CO₂-derived acetate as the substrate (Shi et al. 2025). (3) Without intensive energy consumption for the reduction of CO2 to methanol (Cai et al. 2021) and acetate (Shi et al. 2025), a combination of in vitro MEMMs and microbes can convert agricultural waste (i.e., cellulose that stores plenty of chemical energy derived from solar energy) to starch and microbial protein (Xu et al. 2023) or ethanol (You et al. 2013). Furthermore, a newly-designed MEMMs achieved to completely convert all glucose units of cellulose to starch with a 100% theoretical yield (Wang et al. 2026). Protein is the second important food ingredient and the global demand for food protein is expected to increase by 50% by the middle of the 21st century. Synthetic biology provides an efficient solution for the development of alternative proteins—microbial protein or single-cell protein due to high nutritional value, high production efficiency, and environmental friendliness. For example, mycoprotein derived from Fusarium venenatum and yeast protein derived from Saccharomyces cerevisiae have been successfully applied in the food industry (Gnaim et al. 2025). The carbon emission of producing one kg of fungal protein is only 10% of that of meat. In addition, engineered yeasts can also efficiently produce human lactalbumin (Deng et al. 2022) and lactoferrin (Yen et al. 2024), promoting the innovation of dairy products. To substitute the protein of soy bean used in the feed industry, the biomanufacturing of essential animal acids by engineered microbes is becoming more and more important. The top five essential amino acids in a decreasing important order are lysine, threonine, methionine, valine and isoleucine. Bioenergetic and economic analysis suggest that the biomanufacturing of amino acids is better than microbial protein fermentation (Zhang et al. 2025a). Functional lipids and special lipids can be produced by engineered microorganisms, effectively replacing traditional oil sources. Omega-3 fatty acids, which are crucial for human health, can be produced on a large scale by genetically modifying microorganisms such as Yarrowia lipolytica and algae, replacing traditional fish oil sources (Dietrich et al. 2026; Qin et al. 2025). Squalene, which is traditionally extracted from deep-sea shark livers, can also be produced at high levels by modifying S. cerevisiae (Zuo et al. 2025) and Y. lipolytica (Zhao et al. 2026). Synthetic biology has achieved the green and efficient production of food additives such as sweeteners, edible pigments, acidulants, vitamins, and so on. In terms of sweeteners, erythritol, steviol glycosides, d-allulose, and d-tagatose have become popular products in the low-GI food market. For example, rebaudioside M, the next generation steviol glycosides, produced by genetically modified yeast solves the bitter aftertaste of traditional steviol glycosides (Okonkwo et al. 2024). d-allulose with a sweetness 70% that of sucrose is a healthy sweetener for diabetics and its yield can be improved through strain screening and enzyme immobilization (Zhu et al. 2026). d-tagatose is a natural low-calorie rare sugar with nearly the same sweet taste as sucrose. The biomanufacturing of starchy d-tagatose catalyzed by MEMMs would be the most promising approach because it not only makes d-tagatose from starch but also surpasses the equilibria of isomerization reactions (Fan et al. 2025). In terms of acidulants, microbial fermentation accounts for the dominant position in the market. Aspergillus niger is used for large-scale production of citric acid, accounting for 80% of the global total (Zhang et al. 2025b). Lactic acid and malic acid produced by microbial fermentation can be used in food and pharmaceutical fields, reducing reliance on fossil fuels. In terms of vitamins, engineered E. coli PA132 can make d-Pantothenic acid (vitamin B5) with a titer of up to 83 g/L (Song et al. 2024; Li et al. 2026). Myo-inositol (vitamin B8) can be produced by MEMMs (You et al. 2017) or engineering microbes (Duan et al. 2026), replacing traditional plant extraction. In vitro synthetic biology catalyzed by MEMMs is becoming a predominant biomanufacturing platform for inositol with a titer of 210 g/L (Han et al. 2023). Biosynthesis of cobalamin (vitamin B12) has been intensively investigated by in vivo and in vitro synthetic biology tools (Kang et al. 2023; Lv et al. 2026). In terms of edible pigments, microbial fermentation technology driven by synthetic biology avoids the safety risks of chemical synthetic pigments and the seasonal limitations of plant-extracted pigments. For example, monascus red produced by Monascus fermentation is safe and reliable, and is widely used in traditional foods such as fermented bean curd (Arruda et al. 2025). A natural blue phycobiliprotein, phycocyanin from cyanobacteria, which has physiological functions such as antioxidation, can be improved in yield and stability through metabolic engineering and strain selection (Sharma et al. 2026). Although synthetic biology has shown broad prospects in the food field, its large-scale application still faces many challenges, involving technology, cost, regulation, and consumer acceptance. As for technology, there is a gap between laboratory research and industrial production. For example, the texture and flavor of microbial proteins are difficult to simulate natural animal proteins, and the off-flavor such as yeast taste and fishy smell affects consumer acceptance. The efficiency of carbon and nitrogen fixation of traditional microbial cell factories is low, and it is difficult to achieve the goal of theoretical yields or even negative carbon synthesis. The synthesis enzymatic pathway of high-value lipids is complex, and the production cost of synthetic oils is higher than plant oils, leading to their limited impacts. As for biomanufacturing cost, the high costs of feedstock, fermentation processing, and separation and purification restricts the large-scale popularization of most food products. The quantitative index of “Price to Cost-of-raw-materials Ratio” (PC value) aids in guiding new technologies towards pathways of technology enhancement and cost reduction, forecasting future manufacturing costs and market prices for bioproducts, and assessing the industrialization potential of emerging biotechnologies (Zhang et al. 2025b). As for regulation and ethics, the lack of a unified and rigorous safety evaluation system and nutritional standards, especially the lack of research on the applicability of special groups, such as infants and the elderly, hinders market access. Public concerns about synthetic biology, such as the potential impact on human health and the environment, and the morality of creating “artificial life,” also affect consumer acceptance. In addition, the integration of synthetic biology and traditional fermentation technology still needs to solve the problem of optimizing the interaction between engineered microorganisms and fermentation parameters. The prospects of synthetic biology in the food field will focus on solving existing challenges and realizing the leap from “technological innovation” to “industrial biomanufacturing”. First, strengthen AI-driven strain design, develop high-efficiency carbon-fixing chassis cells, reconstitute MEMMs, optimize metabolic networks, and improve production efficiency while reducing carbon emissions. Second, establish a standardized nutrition and safety evaluation system to clarify the safety of bio-manufactured food products and promote the improvement of regulatory policies. Third, integrate synthetic biology with AI, big data, and other technologies to realize intelligent and continuous production and reduce production costs. Fourth, strengthen public science popularization, improve consumer acceptance of synthetic biology food products, and promote market expansion. Fifth, promote interdisciplinary cooperation and global layout, accelerate the translation of scientific and technological achievements, and reconstruct the global food supply chain. The integration of synthetic biology and the food field is reconstructing the production paradigm of the food industry, bringing innovative changes from basic raw materials to auxiliary materials. Driven by synthetic biology, food production is moving towards a more sustainable, efficient, and healthy direction, which is of great significance for ensuring global food security, alleviating resource and environmental constraints, and meeting consumer demand for high-quality food. Although there are still many challenges as mentioned above, synthetic biology, along with the continuous progress of core technologies, the improvement of regulatory systems, and the deepening of interdisciplinary cooperation, will surely play a more important role in the food field, helping to build a green, efficient, and sustainable new food industry system. Yi-Heng P. Job Zhang: conceptualization, writing – original draft, writing – review and editing, funding acquisition, investigation, resources, methodology, validation, visualization, software, formal analysis, project administration, supervision, data curation.
Yi-Heng P. J. Zhang (Sat,) studied this question.