(97i) Bioreaction Network Analysis: A Central Component of Microbe and Metabolic Engineering

Microorganisms comprise numerous biochemical reactions that are responsible for the catabolism of various types of food. These catabolic reactions generate energy and key precursors that, in turn, fuel the anabolic cellular reactions of cell growth and proliferation. The sum total of these reactions constitute the cellular metabolism and involve, as products or intermediates, an abundance of valuable molecules that are currently made commercially, mostly from fossil fuels, by the fuel and chemical processing industry. Microbes can be converted into little chemical factories through the manipulation of their metabolic pathways that allows them to overproduce these products. This is the promise of the production of fuels and chemicals from renewable resources using the power of modern biotechnology and metabolic engineering.

While the means for implementing pathway modulation are well developed, thanks to the advances of applied molecular biology, gene targets can be identified and the extent of their modification determined only through the analysis of the underlying network of biochemical reactions. Ôhis is further complicated by the general lack of rate-limiting steps in biological systems, which necessitates the consideration of the entire bioreaction network. The development of tools that facilitate bioreaction network analysis is a fundamental element of the field of Metabolic Engineering and owes much to the pioneering work of Professor Wei on the kinetics and parameter identification of chemical reaction networks. These concepts will be reviewed in this talk along with tangible examples of the commercial use of engineered microbes for the production of useful products.