Engineering Clostridium organisms as microbial cell-factories: challenges & opportunities

Clostridium organisms are of major importance in the development of technologies to produce biofuels and chemicals. They are uniquely capable of utilizing virtually all biomass-derived carbohydrates, as well as waste gases, waste materials, and C1 compounds, and they possess diverse biosynthetic capabilities for producing a broad spectrum of metabolites, including those of C4–C8 chain length. They can also be readily used in synthetic, syntrophic, and other microbial consortia to broaden the biosynthetic repertoire of individual organisms, thus enabling the development of novel biotechnological processes. Engineering Clostridium organisms at the molecular and population level is hampered by genetic engineering, genome engineering, and microbial-population engineering tools. We discuss these challenges, and the promise that derives from their resolution aiming to usher in an era of broader use of Clostridium organisms as biotechnological platforms.