Biosynthesis of valuable blue pigments: Recent advances, applications and perspectives.

Natural blue pigments are constrained by limited sources and inefficient microbial biosynthesis, with production bottlenecks tied to pathway flux, precursor supply, and hydrophobic pigment toxicity.

• Why it matters: Blue pigments are increasingly needed for food, textiles, biomedicine, and materials, but scalable natural production is hindered, motivating targeted engineering across microbial systems.
• What they did: This review compares four microbial pigment systems—violacein, indigo, indigoidine, and phycocyanobilin—mapping pathway constraints and organizing solutions into pathway optimization, precursor engineering, and membrane engineering.
• The result: The comparative framework highlights how shared bottlenecks and pigment-specific properties can guide selection of engineering strategies and may provide transferable design principles for other pigments.

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