Engineering yeast for bio-production of food ingredients

The provision of an adequate and high-quality food supply is a challenging issue due to the continued growth of the population and the reduction of arable land resources. To solve these problems, new and efficient food manufacturing processes need to be developed to meet the needs for healthy and nutritious food. Metabolic engineering of microorganisms is a feasible approach to alleviate this problem due to its efficient biosynthesis. For thousands of years, yeast has been used as a cell factory for manufacturing bread, beer and wine. And the development of synthetic biology expands its ability for synthesis of food ingredients, fuels, pharmaceuticals and chemical products. This mini review focuses on metabolic engineering of yeast cell factories to synthesize compounds that have been used as food ingredients with highlighting four food flavors.