Microbial production of C 7 –C 9 aromatic building blocks for the production of natural products

aromatic compounds, elucidate their biosynthetic pathways, analyze the specific challenges inherent to each compound, and summarize the recent progress in metabolic engineering strategies. We further discuss emerging strategies in light of the current state-of-the-art developments in microbial aromatic biosynthesis, incorporating comparisons between microbial and petrochemical production in industrial applications to outline future directions for aromatic compound biosynthesis.