Microbial-Sourced Nutritional Supplements for Human and Animal

Dear Colleagues,

Nutritional supplements are a broad category of products that contain one or more dietary ingredients (including vitamins, minerals, fatty acids, amino acids, oligosaccharides, etc.) to bridge nutrient gaps in the diet. Over the last several decades, there has been a significant increase in the prevalence of supplement use for humans and animals. As a result, the supplement industry has seen consistent growth. Traditionally, nutritional supplements have been extracted from natural plants. However, the yield is greatly influenced by the seasons. Some nutritional supplements can be produced by organic chemical synthesis, but this often requires harmful solvents and is economically incompetent. Microbes consist of abundant enzymes, which can convert large chemical substrates into simple edible foods with a high nutritive value. In addition, microbes grow fast and do not have to rely on climatic conditions, which can be scaled up readily. Thus, microbial-sourced nutritional supplements, typically involving the use of microbes and/or enzymes, emerge as an interesting and economically viable concept.

Novel tools have been applied to these fields to enhance and accelerate the development of microbial-sourced nutritional supplements. This includes the high-throughput screening and characterization of microbes and enzymes, as well as genetic and metabolic engineering tools. By engineering strains/enzymes, it is possible to construct de novo synthesis pathways for certain nutritional supplements, in vivo or in vitro. Furthermore, the waste biomass or cheap chemicals can be adopted to produce nutritional supplements, improving sustainability and reducing CO₂ emissions.

This Special Issue welcomes contributions in the form of original research, reviews, mini-reviews, opinions and methods manuscripts, exploring the use of microbes and/or functional enzymes to produce nutritional supplements, e.g., vitamins, minerals, fatty acids, amino acids, oligosaccharides. Topics include the following:

1. Screening microbes that produce nutritional supplements;
2. Mining and characterizing enzymes involved in nutritional supplements synthesis;
3. Genetic engineering or metabolic optimization to improve the production yield/efficiency of nutritional supplements.
4. Biosynthesis of supplements synthesis from waste biomass or cheap chemicals.
5. Optimizing the fermentation process to reduce the cost and scale up the production of nutritional supplements.

Dr. Zhi Wang
Dr. Yafan Cai
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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• microbial-sourced
• nutritional supplements
• biosynthesis
• fermentation
• enzymes