In the fermentation process of biorefinery, industrial strains are normally subjected to adverse environmental stresses, which leads to their slow growth, yield decline, a substantial increase in energy consumption, and other negative consequences, which ultimately seriously hamper the development of biorefinery. How to minimize the impact of stress on microorganisms is of great significance. This review not only reveals the damaging effects of different environmental stresses on microbial strains but also introduces commonly used strategies to improve microbial tolerance, including adaptive evolution, reprogramming of the industrial host based on genetic circuits, global transcription machinery engineering (gTME) and bioprocess integration. Furthermore, by integrating the advantages of these strategies and reducing the cost of system operation, the tolerance of industrial strains, combined with production efficiency and process stability, will be greatly improved, and the development prospects of biorefinery will be more widespread.
Keywords: Bioprocess integration; Biorefinery; Environmental stresses; Microbial resistance mechanism; Synthetic biology.