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Microbial response to environmental stresses: from fundamental mechanisms to practical applications

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Abstract

Environmental stresses are usually active during the process of microbial fermentation and have significant influence on microbial physiology. Microorganisms have developed a series of strategies to resist environmental stresses. For instance, they maintain the integrity and fluidity of cell membranes by modulating their structure and composition, and the permeability and activities of transporters are adjusted to control nutrient transport and ion exchange. Certain transcription factors are activated to enhance gene expression, and specific signal transduction pathways are induced to adapt to environmental changes. Besides, microbial cells also have well-established repair mechanisms that protect their macromolecules against damages inflicted by environmental stresses. Oxidative, hyperosmotic, thermal, acid, and organic solvent stresses are significant in microbial fermentation. In this review, we summarize the modus operandi by which these stresses act on cellular components, as well as the corresponding resistance mechanisms developed by microorganisms. Then, we discuss the applications of these stress resistance mechanisms on the production of industrially important chemicals. Finally, we prospect the application of systems biology and synthetic biology in the identification of resistant mechanisms and improvement of metabolic robustness of microorganisms in environmental stresses.

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Acknowledgements

This work was financially supported by the 863 project (2014AA021201), a Project Funded by the Priority Academic Program Development of Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions, and the 111 Project (111-2-06).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Carbohydrate Chemistry and Biotechnology, Ministry of Education, Jiangnan University, Wuxi, 214122, China

    Ningzi Guan, Jianghua Li, Guocheng Du & Long Liu

  2. School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, 30332, USA

    Ningzi Guan & Hyun-dong Shin

  3. Key Laboratory of Industrial Biotechnology, Ministry of Education, Jiangnan University, Wuxi, 214122, China

    Jianghua Li, Guocheng Du, Jian Chen & Long Liu

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  1. Ningzi Guan
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  2. Jianghua Li
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Guan, N., Li, J., Shin, Hd. et al. Microbial response to environmental stresses: from fundamental mechanisms to practical applications. Appl Microbiol Biotechnol 101, 3991–4008 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-017-8264-y

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