Strategies for systems-level metabolic engineering

Abstract

Bio-based production of chemicals, fuels and materials is becoming more and more important due to the increasing environmental problems and sharply increasing oil price. To make these bio-based processes economically competitive, the biotechnology industry explores new ways to improve the performance of microbial strains in fermentation processes. In contrast to the random mutagenesis and/or intuitive local metabolic engineering practiced in the past, we are now moving towards global-scale metabolic engineering, aided by various experimental and computational tools. This has recently led to some remarkable achievements for the overproduction of value-added products. In this review, we highlight several relevant gene manipulation tools and computational tools using genome-scale stoichiometric models, and provide useful strategies for successful metabolic engineering along with selected exemplary studies. ?? 2008 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.