Recent Progress in Microbial Biosynthesis by Coculture Engineering.

With the development of metabolic engineering and synthetic biology, a large number of industrially important products has been developed using engineered microorganisms, thereby promoting the sustainable development of society and the economy. However, this approach is challenged by the increasing demand for more complicated biosynthesis or bioconversion tasks. The emergence of coculture engineering, which divides the labor between cocultured strains, presents a new perspective for conducting heterologous biosynthesis and improving the bioproduction performance of target products. This new approach reduces the metabolic burden on each strain and improves the conversion of products beyond the limit of the metabolic capacity of a single microbial strain. Recent advances using coculture engineering for the production of natural products, chemicals and biofuels, and environmental applications are reviewed. Future directions and potential challenges for future research in this field are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]