Bio-based succinic acid: an overview of strain development, substrate utilization, and downstream purification

Succinic acid is an industrially important platform chemical that could be used as precursor for the establishment of a sustainable chemical industry. Due to the depletion of crude oil and the need for sustainable development, the biological production of succinic acid from renewable resources has attracted wide attention. To establish an economical bio-based succinic acid production process, various metabolic engineering strategies have been developed and applied to improve the strain performance, including efficient CO₂ fixation, by-product elimination, use of metabolic modeling approaches, engineering of transcriptional regulations and optimization of reducing power balance. The utilization of renewable waste resources and the optimization of purification process have also been investigated to decrease the cost. This review will provide insights for current advances in succinic acid production and perspectives on further research to make bio-based succinic acid production more efficient and economical.