Advances in CRISPR/Cas9-driven strategies for microbial production and optimization of sugar polyols for food applications: A review

Sugar polyols, including xylitol, erythritol, mannitol and sorbitol are vital nutritional sweeteners having significant applications across various sectors like food, pharmaceuticals, and cosmetics. Metabolic engineering in microbes is a center of attraction to produce value-added products from the lignocellulosic biomass. Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR)/Cas9 has emerged as a powerful and transformative platform in molecular biology, offering innovative solutions for enhancing the biosynthesis of sugar polyols, paving the way for more efficient and cost-effective production methods. This review aims to offer a thorough overview of CRISPR/Cas9 technology and its role in enhancing production of sugar polyols in microbial systems. It focuses on recent advancements and optimization strategies for improving polyol biosynthesis and productivity through CRISPR/Cas9 based gene editing and fermentation process optimization. The review highlights several successful implementations of CRISPR/Cas9 technology in modifying biosynthetic pathways for sugar polyol production in microbes. Continued research and development in this area are likely to lead to further improvements in efficiency and scalability, benefiting various industries particularly food and pharmaceutical industry that rely on these valuable compounds.