title: Metabolic engineering--a genetic toolbox for small molecule organic synthesis.
abstract: Metabolic engineering is an emerging field that exploits biosynthetic machinery as a means to genetically design small molecule production within heterologous host organisms. Molecular design and synthesis with biological tools has lagged behind total synthesis technology for about seventy-five years and owes its existence to relatively new molecular biology techniques. Here the field of metabolic engineering is explained as a comparison to total organic synthesis, including the sequence of scientific events leading up to successful implementation and future goals in the field. It is expected that metabolic engineering will take a place alongside traditional organic synthesis as a powerful means to design and create small organic molecules.
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of California, San Diego, 9500 Gilman Dr., La Jolla, CA 92093-0358, USA.
authors.forename: Michael D
authors.initials: MD
authors.lastname: Burkart