Abstract:

Conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) is one of the most important functional lipids found in recent years. As a newlyfound
nutrient, CLA has been widely applied to medicine and food and its applications are currently extended in other
fields as well. This review systematically summarizes the recent studies on microbial production of CLA, expoundes the
significance of CLA biosynthesis, enumerates the important strains to synthetize CLA, summarizesthe different mechanisms
for the synthesis of CLA by different microorganisms, compares the features of four methods for its microbial synthesis, and
finally presumes the potential trends to synthesize CLA by microorganisms in the future.

Key words: microorganism, conjugated linoleic acid, mechanism, method