Mini-review:In vitroMetabolic Engineering for Biomanufacturing of High-value Products.
With the breakthroughs in biomolecular engineering and synthetic biology, many valuable biologically active compound and commodity chemicals have been successfully manufactured using cell-based approaches in the past decade. However, because of the high complexity of cell metabolism, the identification and optimization of rate-limiting metabolic pathways for improving the product yield is often difficult, which represents a significant and unavoidable barrier of traditionalin vivometabolic engineering. Recently, somein vitroengineering approaches were proposed as alternative strategies to solve this problem. In brief, by reconstituting a biosynthetic pathway in a cell-free environment with the supplement of cofactors and substrates, the performance of each biosynthetic pathway could be evaluated and optimized systematically. Several value-added products, including chemicals, nutraceuticals, and drug precursors, have been biosynthesized as proof-of-concept demonstrations ofin vitrometabolic engineering. This mini-review summarizes the recent progresses on the emerging topic ofin vitrometabolic engineering and comments on the potential application of cell-free technology to speed up the "design-build-test" cycles of biomanufacturing.
Department of Biological Systems Engineering, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, VA 24061, United States.
Weihua
W
Guo
Department of Biological Systems Engineering, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, VA 24061, United States.
Jiayuan
J
Sheng
Department of Biological Systems Engineering, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, VA 24061, United States.
Xueyang
X
Feng
Biosynthesis; Cell-free; Design-build-test cycle; Metabolic pathways