Genomics enabled approaches in strain engineering

Progress in the field of strain engineering is being made by identifying the genetic basis of complex phenotypes, engineering new phenotypes, and combining beneficial phenotypes in industrial hosts. Advances in genomics technologies including high-throughput sequencing and DNA microarrays have improved our ability to make genotype–phenotype correlations. Applications include the analyses of traits that have evolved in nature and traits that have been created in the laboratory. Additionally, newer tools such as Whole Genome Shuffling (WGS), Scalar Analysis of Library Enrichments (SCALEs), global transcription machinery engineering (gTME), and gene-disruption methods such as transposon insertion or site-specific homologous recombination are improving the construction of phenotypic libraries and the selection and analysis of cells with desirable traits. This review focuses on some of these current methods.