CRISPR/Cas9 System for High-Throughput Metabolic Engineering in Lactic Acid Bacteria

Lactic acid bacteria (LAB) are generally recognized as safe, which makes them ideal hosts for producing food-related chemicals. Traditional metabolic engineering has mostly focused on editing one or a few genes, which often fail to meet the demands of industrial production. High-throughput metabolic engineering based on large-scale genome editing tools holds considerable promise for accelerating the construction of industrial strains. Nevertheless, achieving high-throughput metabolic engineering in Laboratories, which requires large-scale systematic modification of entire metabolic networks, remains a major challenge. This Review first summarizes the progress in the metabolic engineering of LAB. It then highlights the application of CRISPR/Cas9 for precise gene editing in the LAB. Next, we systematically review the large-scale genome editing tools in bacteria. Finally, we discuss future directions for developing large-scale genome editing tools in Laboratories. Through these efforts, we expect that LAB can be developed into efficient microbial cell factories for the sustainable production of food chemicals.