Bacterial sigma factors as targets for engineered or synthetic transcriptional control

Abstract

Sigma (σ) factors are the predominant constituents of transcription regulation in bacteria. s Factors recruit the core RNA polymerase to recognize promoters with specific DNA sequences. Recently, engineering of transcriptional regulators has become a significant tool for strain engineering. The present review summarizes the recent advances in s factor based engineering or synthetic design. The manipulation of s factors presents insights into the bacterial stress tolerance and metabolite productivity. We envision more synthetic design based on s factors that can be used to tune the regulatory network of bacteria.