A CRISPR technology and biomolecule production by synthetic biology approach

Biomolecules are an organic molecule that includes carbohydrates, protein, lipids, and nucleic acids. They are important for the survival of living cells. Some of valuable biomolecules have huge demand, which cannot be fulfilled from their renewable resources. Microbes have been used as a cell factory for their alternative production. The strategies adopted for engineering a high yielding biomolecule producing microbe are overexpression, knockout, and activation of gene. With the advent of synthetic biology and clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR)/Cas tool, genetic manipulation has become easier and is a less labor-intensive process. Engineering of metabolic pathway faces multiple challenges such as in metabolic flux imbalances, presence of nondesirable enzymes, and leaky gene expression can be solved by assembling the best biological parts available in nature. These biological parts can be used to construct a novel pathway for the production of the desired biomolecule without altering the native functions of the host. Another emerging area known as synthetic genomics has opened up possibilities of creating a synthetic genome for producing an artificial cell. Similarly, an artificial genome can be customized to engineer microbes for specific biomolecule production while removing nonessential function of the cell. This chapter describes the application of synthetic biology and CRISPR/Cas system for the production of important valuable biomolecules. The recent tools for the engineering of microbes are also discussed in the context of biomolecule production. The chapter overall produces a comprehensive work in the field of biomolecules production by applying diverse approaches of synthetic biology and CRISPR/Cas system.