Recent Advancement of Microbial Production of Curcuminoids and Its Industrial Applications: A Review

Abstract

Turmeric (from Curcuma longa) is a yellow colored spice commonly used in daily diet. It has been extensively used in traditional medicine since ancient times to treat various nervous and disorder disease. A little was known about the biosynthesis curcuminoid in turmeric and identified the enzymes involved in the curcuminoid biosynthetic pathway and confirmed the involvement of the phenylpropanoid pathway in the production of these compounds in plants. Traditionally known curcumin has emerged as a modern biological regulator curcuminoids, agroclimatic and soil environmental variation are also influencing the curcumin synthase gene expression, which is correlated with curcumin yield in turmeric cultivars. Microbial production of curcuminoids is very promising and production yield can be improved by using synthetic biology approaches and metabolic engineering tools, to make heterologous production competitive with the current process of curcuminoid's extraction from plants. Type III polyketide synthases are responsible for the production of curcuminoids. Among those DCS and CURS enzymes have been used to synthesize curcuminoids. Synthetic biology and metabolite engineering approaches have generated microbial cell factories that can allow the for the mass production of pharmaceutically and nutraceuticals important microbial metabolites in an environmentally friendly and efficient way. Considering a wide pharmaceutical, industrial and health beneficial applications of curcuminoids, this review focused on microbial production of curcuminoids and substrate recognizing and regulatory mechanism of curcuminoid synthase and obtain the mutant enzymes using mutagenesis study and synthetic biology approaches.