Cell Engineering

Educated modification of native cells so as to convert them to cell factories consubstantiates cell engineering—in which synthetic biology and metabolic engineering play seminal, yet complementary roles; while synthetic biology provides components and information about various biological phenomena, metabolic engineering tries to apply such tools and pieces of information to optimize the biological synthesis of a desired compound. After pioneering efforts dealing with pathways described by well-understood kinetics and regulatory mechanisms—and targeted at high-priced therapeutics, current trends have focused on production of high-volume commodities—as is the case of biopolymers, fuels (e.g., ethanol, isobutanol, and n-butanol; hydrocarbons; oils), chemicals (e.g., acrylic, lactic, and succinic acids; butanediol; isoprene).