“…A plethora of metabolic pathways for breakdown and assimilation of aromatic compounds are known in C. glutamicum , which guided the biosynthesis of versatile aromatic compounds by interception and/or extension of these pathways ( Brinkrolf et al, 2006 ; Shen et al, 2012 ; Lee and Wendisch, 2017 ). Thus, this bacterium has been used a prominent host for the production of aromatic compounds, such as l -tryptophan, halogenated l -tryptophans, anthranilate, methylated anthranilates, 4-hydroxybenzoate (4-HBA), 4-aminobenzoate, protocatechuate (PCA), indole-3-acetic acid, violacein, and anthocyanin ( Lee and Wendisch, 2017 ; Kim et al, 2019 ; Wendisch et al, 2022 ). Recently, we engineered C. glutamicum to produce 19 g/L of 4-HBA in a 5-L bioreactor ( Syukur Purwanto et al, 2018 ), and, by extension of this concept, introduction of CAR enabled production of 2.3 g/L of 4-HB alcohol as a main product and 0.3 g/L of 4-HB aldehyde as a minor by-product in flask culture ( Kim et al, 2020 ; Figure 1A ).…”