Host organisms: Bacillus subtilis

Bacillus subtilis and its close Bacillus relatives are important bacterial platforms for industrial production of enzymes and fine chemicals such as vitamin B2 and nucleotides. B. subtilis is an attractive bacterial organism for industrial use mainly because of its straightforward genetic manipulation, favorable growth characteristics in industrial scale fermentations, its ability to produce and secrete proteins and fine chemicals outside the cell and its high level of safety with the generally recognized as safe (GRAS) status attributed to many of its products. Since centuries the “natto” subspecies of B. subtilis is used for the fermentative production of natto, a traditional Japanese soya-based food product. Moreover, B. subtilis is also the Gram-positive model organism for basic research in biochemistry, genetics, and molecular biology. Here, we review advances in the application of B. subtilis for the production of proteins and fine chemicals with special emphasis on the methodologies that can be applied to improve this versatile cell factory.