Manuscript published: "Engineering microbial exopolysaccharides for food applications"
Today the article by Broker & Schmid has been published in Current Opinion in Biotechnology.
In this manuscript, microbial exopolysaccharides with strong potential for both direct and indirect food applications are reviewed, alongside engineering strategies to optimize their biotechnological production. The authors emphasize that for sucrase‐based polysaccharides, enzyme engineering focused on molecular weight control offers promising novel functional properties; for synthase‐based polysaccharides, approaches such as leveraging epimerases or harnessing the natural promiscuity of synthase enzymes are particularly effective; and for heteropolysaccharides, the review highlights a few successful cases of engineering and heterologous expression in chassis organisms while acknowledging ongoing challenges to efficient optimization.
Congratulations to Dr. Jannis Bröker for the outstanding work done!