Ergothioneine (EGT) is a unique naturally
occurring amino acid
that is usually biosynthesized by bacteria and fungi. As a food-derived
antioxidant and cytoprotectant, it has several physiological benefits
and has a wide range of applications in food, medicine, and cosmetics.
Traditional production of EGT is mainly through biological extraction
or chemical synthesis; however, these methods are inefficient, making
large-scale production to meet the growing market demand difficult.
Nowadays, the rapid development of synthetic biology has greatly accelerated
the research on the EGT production by microbial fermentation. In this
paper, the biological characteristics, applications, biosynthesis,
separation, and detection methods of EGT were fully reviewed. Furthermore,
the approaches and challenges for engineering microbial cells to efficiently
synthesize EGT were also discussed. This work provides new ideas and
future research potentials in EGT production.