Process design for microbial plastic factories: metabolic engineering of polyhydroxyalkanoates.
Implementing several metabolic engineering strategies, either individually or in combination, it is possible to construct microbial plastic factories to produce a variety of polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA) biopolymers with desirable structures and material properties. Approaches include external substrate manipulation, inhibitor addition, recombinant gene expression, host cell genome manipulation and, most recently, protein engineering of PHA biosynthetic enzymes. In addition, mathematical models and molecular methods can be used to elucidate metabolically engineered systems and to identify targets for performance improvement.
Department of Chemical Engineering, 201 Gilman Hall, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-1462, USA. aldor@gene.com
Ilana S
IS
Aldor
Jay D
JD
Keasling
D000217:Acyltransferases / Q000096:biosynthesis*; D001419:Bacteria / Q000737:chemistry / Q000378:metabolism*; D001698:Biomedical Engineering; D008828:Microbiological Techniques; D010969:Plastics / Q000378:metabolism*; D015202:Protein Engineering
D010969:Plastics; D000217:Acyltransferases; C077225:poly(3-hydroxyalkanoic acid) synthase