Bioprocess Considerations and Enabling Technologies for High-Efficiency Precision Fermentation

Precision fermentation is a new field involving microbial biosystems engineering and fermentation design for efficient production of specific and/or new products using microorganisms. There is a lack of resources to guide precision fermentation in both food research and industry, especially how the technology can be designed, utilised, and scaled for economic and environmental sustainability. This comprehensive technical review aims to discuss the key bioprocess considerations in terms of fermentation behaviour, bioreactor design, strain development, substrate selection, scale-up, and downstream processing to achieve favorable product formation kinetics and efficient recovery. Such a thorough understanding is critically needed to achieve high product concentrations, yields, and productivities. The present review further describes the application of enabling technologies such as metabolic engineering and omics tools, metabolic flux analyses, and artificial intelligence that allow a deeper analysis of the complex fermentation metabolic pathways and serve as optimization tools to improve production yields. It finally highlights other considerations such as food safety, consumer acceptance, regulatory requirements, and various approaches to address these issues which are important in determining the overall success of precision fermentation processes.