Production of plant metabolites with applications in the food industry using engineered microorganisms

Secondary plant metabolites are extensively used in today’s food industries, for example, as coloring-agents, flavouring-agents or texturizing agents. In particular, metabolites with antioxidative properties find applications as preservatives or anti-browning agents. Today, extraction from plant material represents the major source of these metabolites, but progress in the field of metabolic engineering also enabled the microbial production of these valuable compounds as a more economic and ecological alternative. This review article presents the current state of metabolic engineering of microorganisms for production of plant metabolites with applications in the food industries. We focus on compounds, which are already used in food applications, discuss current limitations of microbial plant metabolite production, and outline strategies on how these challenges can be addressed in the future.