Metabolic engineering properties

Many aspects of metabolic control are not readily apparent when isolated enzymes are characterized in vitro. The regulatory function of allosteric properties and putative enzyme complexes are best studied in vivo. For this purpose, metabolic engineering can be used as a basic research tool to investigate the effect of specific perturbations on the overall flux through an alkaloid pathway. The first application of metabolic engineering to plant alkaloid biosynthesis involved the transformation... 

Besides the engineering of S. cerevisiae for organic acid production, through metabolic engineering it is possible to reconstruct entire pathways. In 1994, Yamano et al. [163] reported the reconstruction of a complete secondary metabolic pathway in S. cerevisiae, resulting in the ability of the yeast to produce p-carotene and lycopene. Carotenoids are a class of pigments used in the food industry and, due to their antioxidant properties, they have wide commercial interest. The biosynthesis of these compounds does naturally not occur in S. cerevisiae and to allow... 

Lactic acid bacteria are used to produce fermented milk products, and the exopolysaccharides produced by the bacteria influence the texture of the resulting products. More importantly, these exopolysaccharides are thought to have several health benefits. There is evidence they lower cholesterol, modulate the immune system, help prevent colon cancer, and fight ulcers [342,343]. There is thus interest in establishing stmcture-function relationships for these stmctures, as well as in metabolic engineering of lactic acid bacteria to produce capsular polysaccharides with the desired properties [342,343]. 

Another two key concepts in metabolic engineering are metabolic pathway analysis and metabolic pathway modeling. The former is used for assessing inherent network properties in the complete biochemical reaction networks. It involves identification of the metabolic network structure (or pathway topology), quantification of the fluxes through the branches of the metabolic network, and identification of the control structures within the metabolic network. 

Metabolically Engineered Glycans Alter the Chemical Properties of the Cell Surface... 

Despite the progress biocatalysis has made in the last few years its potential is still increasing. By improved screening methods new catalysts will be detected and made available in large amounts by cloning and overexpression. Directed evolution will be used to improve properties such as stability or selectivity(118> 119). Metabolic engineering will be used to analyze and remove bottlenecks in the metabolism or to create novel biocatalysts[1Z01. 

In addition to metabolic engineering of the specific riboflavin pathway and its immediate supply routes, that is, purine and pentose phosphate pathways, improving of general host properties that relate to the performance under industrial process conditions is mandatory for commercially viable production processes. Industrial... 

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