Prospects and progress on crocin biosynthetic pathway and metabolic engineering
Taoli Liu, Suize Yu, Zhichao Xu, Jiantao Tan, Bin Wang, Yao‐Guang Liu, Qinlong Zhu
Abstract
fruits, which display great pharmacological activities for human health, such as anticancer, reducing the risk of atherosclerosis, and preventing Alzheimer's disease. However, traditional sources of crocins are no longer sufficient to meet current demands. The recent clarification of the crocin biosynthetic pathway opens up the possibility of large-scale production of crocins by synthetic metabolic engineering methods. In this review, we mainly introduce the crocin biosynthetic pathway, subcellular route, related key enzymes, and its synthetic metabolic engineering, as well as its challenges and prospects, with a view to providing useful references for further studies on the synthetic metabolic engineering of crocins.