Systems Metabolic Engineering

Background Information 

There have been growing concerns over the limited fossil resources in additions to the environmental problems associated with fossil fuels. These have been the motivating factors towards developing sustainable methods and processes of producing chemicals, fuels, and other materials from renewable sources. Systems metabolic engineering is part of the new technology that will enable the transformation of microorganisms to cell factories that are efficient. This form of technology incorporates techniques and concepts of biology to speed up the creation of metabolic enzymes for the optimal production of desired products. In addition, systems metabolic engineering has been used to produce yeast used for pain treatment. These drugs are essential, especially in the third world countries where the pain is insufficiently managed even today. Moreover, there is a range of chemicals that can be produced using this form of technology, and which are widening every year with research and innovation. Metabolic engineering is likely to produce all chemicals that can never be affordably made from fossil fuels, in particular, complex organic compounds. 

Results 

With the recent advances in systems metabolic engineering, the creation of biological systems is now achievable for metabolic engineers. These systems can manufacture chemicals that are otherwise expensive, and hard to produce by conventional means. These developments of renewable biofuels and biochemical by using carbohydrates as the feedstock is set to replace the depleting crude (Shimizu, 2002). Moreover, this is seen as a way to minimize climate change, which is mostly influenced by production of these fuels from fossils. Metabolic engineering is the practice of increasing the cell’s production of a particular substance by optimizing regulatory and genetic processes. These procedures enable cells to convert raw materials into substances that it requires for survival. Biochemical reactions and a series of enzymes are used in chemical networks processes, in order to make sure that they produce essential substances on an industrial scale, cost effectively. These processes sometimes involve complex engineering of microbial metabolism, and other times, it’s just changing the genetic makeup of the microorganism (Wu, Du, Zhou, & Chen, 2014). The current instances include the production of pharmaceuticals, cheese, beer, and other biotechnology products. 

This technique determines the constraints and their effects on the production of the desired product by analyzing the metabolic pathway of a microorganism. This is contrary to the past where in order to increase the production of the desired product, a microorganism was modified through induced mutation, where the mutant over-expressed the desired output. There are common strategies known that are applied in metabolic engineering to ensure that instead of over-expressing or deleting the genes responsible for encoding metabolic enzymes, more focus targets the regulatory networks to make sure that the metabolism is engineered efficiently (Yan, & Liao, 2009). These strategies include enzyme engineering, blocking the competing metabolic pathways, among others. Unlike fossil fuels, the materials used in metabolic engineering are renewable since they are made from microbes. Moreover, they are known to potentially serve to reverse the carbon from the atmosphere and incorporating it into products which are eventually buried as solid waste. Additionally, the processes involved are known to emit a relatively small amount of greenhouse gasses as compared to the burning of fossil fuels. 

Discussion 

This discipline of metabolic engineering has been recently applied in different areas with efforts to boost commercial production of target molecules. The primary objective of this form of technology is to overproduce chemicals that are essential to humankind from mammalian or microbial cells. The engineers achieve this by understanding a cell’s metabolic network at the systems level. Systems metabolic engineering has been applied to production strains platform such as Escherichia coli for biofuels, biopolymers, and various chemical production (Shimizu, 2002). On the other hand, conventional metabolic engineering focused on other aspects such as quantitative values, yield, and productivity from a production host. As such, aspects such as efficiency and renewable resources are not emphasized. 

Metabolic engineering is continuously expanding into the production of secondary metabolites to acquire optimum results. As this form of technology scales up to industrial use, it requires more research and tools as it is an evolving field. Breakthroughs in the field of synthetic biology have greatly aided in understanding metabolite damage and its repair. Engineers can produce required products more conveniently and at affordable prices. This is impacting positively on the environment and is better for the global economy. This results from making many of the chemical inputs required in industries by using living organisms instead of using coal, gas, and oil (Wu, Du, Zhou, & Chen, 2014). Microbes used in metabolic engineering has more potential, make inexpensive materials in the long term compared to conventional engineering which is more expensive and has little potential. With recent advances, systems metabolic engineering has developed to compete with conventional chemical production on performance, quality, and price. 

If the current efforts continue in this field, more important achievements are awaiting shortly to be realized. There is room for further development, especially in the state of the art tools put in place for the metabolic engineering community. This will further enhance optimization in the production of secondary metabolites. If such devices are incorporated in these processes, more diverse products will be produced at the industrial level. Also, more research and investigation should be carried out to determine the challenges and limiting factors that inhibit the full potential of these processes concerning production efficiencies. Of more importance is the fact that this field should not compete with food production for land use and avoid accidental releases of the engineered microorganisms into the environment. They should be kept safely in their tanks where they are useful for things that will benefit the environment and humanity. 

References 

Shimizu, Hiroshi. (January 01, 2002). Metabolic Engineering. Integrating Methodologies of Molecular Breeding and Bioprocess Systems Engineering. Journal of Bioscience and Bioengineering, 94, 6, 563-573. 

Wu, J., Du, G., Zhou, J., & Chen, J. (January 01, 2014). Systems metabolic engineering of microorganisms to achieve large-scale production of flavonoid scaffolds. Journal of Biotechnology, 188, 72-80. 

Yan, Y., & Liao, J. C. (January 01, 2009). Engineering metabolic systems for production of advanced fuels. Journal of Industrial Microbiology & Biotechnology, 36, 4, 471-9.