The formate bio-economy

•Formate is an ideal mediator between the physicochemical and biological realms.•Formate can be efficiently produced from various highly available resources.•Natural formate assimilation pathways are inefficient or not convenient to work with.•Specially tailored formate-assimilation routes could prove advantageous.•Model, industrial organisms could be adapted to formatotrophism.

In this review we discuss the concept of the formate bio-economy: formate can be produced efficiently from various available resources and can be consumed by microbes as the sole carbon source for the production of value-added chemicals, directly addressing major challenges in energy storage and chemical production. We show that the formate assimilation pathways utilized by natural formatotrophs are either inefficient or are constrained to organisms that are difficult to cultivate and engineer. Instead, adapting model industrial organisms to formatotrophic growth using synthetic, specially tailored formate-assimilation routes could prove an advantageous strategy. Several studies have started to tackle this challenge, but a fully active synthetic pathway has yet to be established, leaving room for future undertakings.