Advances in Strain Engineering for Improved Bio-fuel Production- a Perspective

Bio-fuels are ecologically sustainable alternates of fossil fuel and have attracted interest of research community in the last few decades. Microorganisms such as bacteria, fungi and microalgae have important roles to play at various steps of bio-fuel production. And therefore several efforts such as genetic engineering have been made to improve the performance of these microbes to achieve the desired results. Metabolic engineering of organisms has benefitted immensely from the novel tools and technologies that have recently been developed. Microorganisms have the advantage of smaller and less complex genome and hence are best suitable for genetic manipulations. In this perspective, we briefly review a few interesting studies which represent some recent advances in the field of metabolic engineering of microbes.