Abstract
Rhamnolipids (RLs) are promising biosurfactants with excellent surface activity properties and environmental compatibility, attracting widespread interest in environmental remediation, agriculture, and pharmaceutical applications. Pseudomonas aeruginosa remains the most studied native producer due to its high innate RLs synthetic capacity exceeding 15.0 g/L, though performance strongly depends on strain, substrate, and bioprocess parameters. This review summarizes the recent research progress in RLs production, focusing on metabolic engineering and fermentation optimization in P. aeruginosa. The critical bottlenecks including biosafety risks and downstream costs are analyzed, and the strain engineering and process strategies evaluated here provide insights to facilitate RLs commercialization.