High-valued hexoses bioproduction from natural sugar resources: Status, trends, challenges and perspectives

The high-valued conversion of natural sugar resources is one of the priorities for global resource utilization and human health development. These conversions can not only greatly improve the efficiency of carbon resource utilization, but its diversified products are also potential candidates for alleviating the increasingly serious human health problems such as obesity and diabetes. As a novel sugar food additive, the industrial-scale production of high-valued hexoses have emerged as a critical focus in food science and biotechnology. This study evaluates established methodologies for bioproduction of high-valued hexoses, and provides a comparative assessment of technological advantages and industrial scalability limitations. Our investigation highlights the thermodynamic-driven isomerization as a promising platform for industrial applications in theory, necessitating an in-depth examination of its current technological status and developmental prospects. The thermodynamic-driven isomerization demonstrates distinct thermodynamic advantages through its innovative energy-recycling mechanism, coupled with the utilization of cost-effective starch derivatives as substrates. However, three critical challenges hinder its industrial application: (1) Insufficient catalytic properties of rate-limiting enzymes; (2) Instability of continuous bioprocessing; (3) Suboptimal atomic economy. Strategic advancements should focus on: (1) Mining novel biocatalysts through integrated approaches combining structural bioinformatics, molecular dynamics simulations, and directed evolution; (2) Developing immobilized enzyme reactors with improved stability; (3) Residual substrate recycling and by-product minimization to improve atomic economy. These synergistic improvements have the potential to substantially improve hexose conversion while significantly reducing manufacturing costs, ultimately enabling cost-competitive industrial-scale functional sweetener production.