Astaxanthin has been widely applied in feed additives and the medical industry due to its antioxidant, coloring, and health‐promoting properties. Traditional processes for astaxanthin production mainly include natural extraction and chemical synthesis; however, they cannot meet the growing market demand and consumers’ requirements for natural products. Microbial synthesis of astaxanthin offers a promising alternative. Many natural sources of astaxanthin, such as Xanthophyllomyces dendrorhous, and genetically modified yeasts, such as Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Yarrowia lipolytica and Kluyveromyces marxianus have been isolated and contructed. Various strategies such as mutagenesis, genetic modification, and fermentation regulation have been developed to increase the astaxanthin production from industrial yeast. Due to the broad substrate spectrum of industrial yeast, many low‐cost resources have also been explored for astaxanthin production. Accordingly, this review will mainly summarize the progress of research into the production of astaxanthin with yeasts, analyze factors affecting astaxanthin synthesis in metabolic pathways, and propose methods and strategies to achieve high yields of astaxanthin from yeasts. © 2022 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Microbial synthesis of target chemicals usually involves multienzymatic reactions in vivo, especially for compounds with a long metabolic pathway. However, when various genes are introduced into one single strain, it leads to a heavy metabolic burden. In contrast, the microbial coculture system can allocate metabolic pathways into different hosts, which will relieve the metabolic burdens. Escherichia coli is the most used chassis to synthesize biofuels and chemicals owing to its well-known genetics, high transformation efficiency, and easy cultivation. Accordingly, cocultures containing the cooperative E. coli with other microbial species have received great attention. In this review, the individual applications and boundedness of different combinations will be summarized. Additionally, the strategies for the self-regulation of population composition, which can help enhance the stability of a coculture system, will also be discussed. Finally, perspectives for the cocultures will be proposed.

Consolidated bioprocessing (CBP) is a promising approach to directly convert lignocellulose feedstocks into targeted biochemicals and biofuels, which is commonly executed by single engineered microorganisms. Alternatively, the complexed metabolic functions...