Author(s)

Nasir Ali^1*, Muhammad Ammar Athar¹, Yasir Hayat Khan¹, Muhammad Idrees², Dawood Ahmad³

¹School of Life Science, Xiamen University, Xiamen, China.
²Chengdu Institute of Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chengdu, China.
³Institute of Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Agricultural University, Peshawar, Pakistan.

Cellulases and hemicellulases are the main industrial sources from different microorganisms used to depolymerise plant biomass to simple sugars that are converted to chemical intermediates and biofuels, such as ethanol. Cellulases are formed adaptively, and several positive (xyr1, Ace2, HAP2/3/5) and negative (Ace1, Cre1) components involved in this regulation are now known. In this review, we summarise current knowledge about how cellulase biosynthesis is regulated, and outline recent approaches and suitable strategies for facilitating the targeted improvement of cellulase production by genetic engineering. Trichoderma reesei is the preferred organism for producing industrial cellulases. However, a more efficient heterologous expression system for enzymes from different organism is needed to further improve its cellulase mixture. In addition those optimizations of the promoter and linker for hybrid genes can dramatically improve the efficiency of heterologous expression of cellulase genes.

Cellulase, Regulation, Transcription, Promoter, Review

Ali, N. , Athar, M. , Khan, Y. , Idrees, M. and Ahmad, D. (2014) Regulation and Improvement of Cellulase Production: Recent Advances. Natural Resources, 5, 857-863. doi: 10.4236/nr.2014.514073.