Abstract:As an important four-carbon non-protein amino acid，γ-aminobutyric acid（GABA）possesses multiple physiological functions，such as improving sleep，boosting metabolism，and lowering blood pressure，so it is widely used in food and medicine fields.Currently，GABA is mainly produced by chemical synthesis，plant enrichment，and biosynthesis.Among them，biosynthesis has attracted much attention due to high security，environmental friendliness，short period，and low cost.However，the biosynthesis of GABA still faces bottleneck problems，such as the lack of efficient chassis strain，low activity of the wild-type enzyme，incompatible pH environment between the strain and the rate-limiting enzyme，low substrate utilization rate of de novo synthesis，and metabolic pressure on strain growth.As the market demand for GABA is increasing，it is urgent to explore the measures for improving GABA production.The production of GABA by biosynthesis can be increased by screening high-yielding wild-type strains and mutagenesis breeding，construction of coenzyme factor complement pathway，directed modification of the rate-limiting enzyme，metabolic flux remodeling，and multi-strain co-culture.Furthermore，the future opportunities and challenges are prospected.