Luciana de Brito - Metabolic Engineering and Process

Question 1

What is the role of metabolic engineering in industrial production? What are the production factors that need to be optimized by metabolic engineering?

Question 2

Briefly explain how to determine metabolic fluxes in the central metabolism of an organism.

Question 3

Compare the main differences, advantages, and disadvantages between metabolic flux analysis and flux balance analysis.

Question 4

Explain how novel metabolic pathways can be elucidated, and how production of a certain metabolite can be improved in unknown/not characterized bacteria.

Question 5

Given the advantage of the available tools and background knowledge on the metabolism of model organisms, e.g. Corynebaterium glutamicum, explain the reasoning for exploring alternative and rather unestablished hosts in metabolic engineering.

Question 6

Briefly describe the steps that can be taken in systems metabolic engineering towards large-scale, high yield production of value-added products from
microbial cells.