Metabolic engineering for microbial cell factories

Ali SamyAbdelaal^a,c, Syed Shams Yazdani^a,b

Microbial Engineering Group, International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, New Delhi, India.

Abstract

In the development of microbial cell factories for production of biomolecules from low-value renewable substrates, metabolic engineering plays vital role in achieving cost-effective sustainable chemical industries, including biofuels and high-value chemicals such as pharmaceutical products. Strategies of metabolic engineering with the help of systems biology, synthetic biology, and evolutionary engineering are used for construction of new metabolic pathways and modification of existing ones for transforming various microorganisms into efficient cell factories for the desired products. In this chapter the definition, processes, and general approaches of metabolic engineering have been highlighted. Also, different systems metabolic engineering tools and strategies and how they function together simultaneously and synergistically to build new microbial cell factories have been discussed. Finally the commercialization status of metabolically engineered microbial cell factories for various industrial products from different organisms has been summarized.

Keywords: Metabolic engineering, Strain improvement, Synthetic biology, Microbial cell factories, Industrial production.