Abstract: This review systematically introduces the chemical properties and extensive biological activities of violacein, a purple pigment from natural sources, and briefly describes its potential application value in medicine, agriculture, and the food industry. The research history of violacein extracted from natural sources is reviewed, and the development bottlenecks in large-scale production due to limited yield and a complex synthesis mechanism are analyzed. In recent years, the rapid development of synthetic biology and metabolic engineering has provided new ideas for the efficient biosynthesis of violacein. This article focuses on reviewing the structure and regulatory mechanism of the violacein biosynthetic gene cluster, and expounds on the technical progress made in constructing heterologous expression systems inEscherichia coli,Yarrowia lipolytica, and other model strains. In addition, this article summarizes the research trend of using agricultural by-products and industrial waste as fermentation raw materials to reduce production costs and improve environmental friendliness, and explores non-metabolic engineering strategies such as optimizing fermentation process parameters to improve the efficiency of violacein production. The current industrialization process of violacein is still restricted by multiple factors such as a long fermentation cycle and low efficiency of the synthesis pathway. Based on the existing research results, this article concludes that the key to efficient and sustainable production of violacein lies in unraveling the gene regulatory network and enhancing the resource utilization efficiency of cell factories. To this end, strategies for optimizing gene expression, improving fermentation protocols, and utilizing low-cost raw materials are proposed to promote efficient and sustainable production of violacein.

Key words: 紫色杆菌素, vioABCDE, 菌株改造, 生物合成