Metabolic Engineering of Microbial Strains for 1,2,4-Butanetriol Production: Progress and Future Perspectives.

Sustainable production of biofuels and biochemicals from renewable biomass represents a promising alternative to fossil-based feedstocks, offering significant benefits for low-carbon economies and environmental protection. The biochemical 1,2,4-butanetriol (BT) is an important short-chain chiral triol, which is widely used as pharmaceuticals, industrial foam, anticorrosion additives, and plasticizers. Although biosynthesis of BT has been achieved in various engineered microbes, achieving cost-competitive production remains a significant challenge. This chapter focuses on research progress in metabolic engineering of BT production, which mainly includes (1) design of BT biosynthetic pathways for expression in bacterial and yeast cell factories, (2) current metabolic engineering and process optimization strategies to optimize BT production, and (3) utilizing lignocellulosic biomass as a sustainable feedstock for BT production. In addition, future prospects on enhancing BT production efficiency through advanced metabolic engineering and synthetic biology approaches integrating with artificial intelligence (AI)-based technologies are also presented.