Metabolic pathway engineering

Abstract

Organisms can be engineered to produce a wide variety of compounds by either enhancing endogenous metabolic pathways, or by introducing exogenous pathways that are either borrowed from other organism, or de novo-designed pathways unknown to nature. While overexpression of bottleneck enzymes and deletion of competing pathways remain at the core of metabolic pathway engineering, there are many other key elements that need to be considered to successfully develop strains for the production of valuable products. Some of these key elements include the choice of host organism, which must take into account the natural advantages and disadvantages of the host for a specific application; computational methods to discover, design, and optimize metabolic pathways; transcriptional control engineering, to fine-tune the levels and timing of enzyme expression; enzyme engineering to design novel enzymatic activities required in specific metabolic pathways; development of new synthetic biology tools to increase the capabilities and expedience of genetic interventions; and innovative strategies to reduce metabolic burden. This special issue of Synthetic and Systems Biotechnology, focusing on “Metabolic Pathway Engineering” comprises eight review articles and five original research studies that provide excellent examples of how these key elements support and augment metabolic engineering.