Metabolic Pathway Engineering

Metabolic systems engineering combines the tools and approaches of systems biology, synthetic biology, and evolutionary engineering. This technology has been used in bioengineering applications to create high-performing microbes and plants that produce important chemicals, pharmaceuticals, crops, and other natural products. Current applications include optimizing metabolic pathways to enhance degradation of biomass for biofuel production and accelerated processing of environmental waste products and contaminants.

This book reviews a range of studies on metabolism, from the earliest work of Lavoisier and Buchner to current cutting-edge research in metabolic systems engineering. It includes examples to illustrate the applications of this technology in the optimization of metabolic pathways to create robust industrial strains as well as in the engineering of biological processes involving health and diseases of humans, animals, and plants. Written by a seasoned computational biologist with many years of experience in genomics, bioinformatics, and systems biology, this book will appeal to anyone interested in metabolic systems analysis and metabolic pathway engineering.

Key Features:

• Provides a historical perspective on studies of metabolism, highlighting the current advances made possible by DNA sequencing technology
• Includes detailed descriptions of technology, workflows, and available computational tools for genome-scale metabolic network reconstruction/modeling and metabolic systems engineering
• Is illustrated throughout with figures and tables and accompanied by references in each chapter