Design Membrane Engineering for Improved Tolerance

The ability of ethanol to inhibit microbial growth is one of the reasons for its popularity in beverages throughout human history. However, this inhibition of microbial growth and metabolism is problematic when we want our microbial biocatalysts to produce ethanol at a high concentration. This problem of microbial inhibition by the target product is widespread within the metabolic engineering community, as reviewed elsewhere [89-93]. 

Just as ethanol served as the test case for the development of techniques for altering microbial metabolism, it has also served as a test case for the development of techniques for improving robustness. Most of these techniques are evolution-arily based and are described below. However, Luo et al. s paper on membrane 

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