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Alarge number of natural compounds derived from plants, fungi, and microorganisms possess broad pharmaceutical and medical applications. However, conventional methods, including chemical synthesis and extraction from natural sources, are complicated, costly, and time-consuming. Thus, there has been increasing demand for their industrial-scale production by microbial fermentation. Because many natural products of plant origin are not synthesized by microorganisms, synthetic biology has attracted much attention in terms of the development of engineered microorganisms capable of producing these natural compounds. Over the past several decades, an increasing number of natural compounds and their precursors, including the recently biosynthesized opioids and Taxol precursors, have been produced by microorganisms developed through applying synthetic biology. 1 Commercialization of natural …