Skip to main content

Systems biotechnology and metabolic engineering

Edited by Prof Sang Yup Lee

Microbial Cell Factories invites submissions to this ongoing thematic series on the topic of Systems biotechnology and metabolic engineering. It is now time to exploit systems approaches to microbial biotechnology, starting with up-stream (strain, cell and organism development) by metabolic engineering, which will ultimately lead to successful biotechnology development when combined with systems engineering of mid- to down-stream processes. Please see here for further details, including how to submit your new work to the series.

This collection of articles has not been sponsored and articles have undergone the journal’s standard peer-review process. The Guest Editors declare no competing interests.

Page 4 of 4

  1. Polylactic acid (PLA), a biodegradable polymer, has the potential to replace (at least partially) traditional petroleum-based plastics, minimizing “white pollution”. However, cost-effective production of optic...

    Authors: Jinfang Zhao, Liyuan Xu, Yongze Wang, Xiao Zhao, Jinhua Wang, Erin Garza, Ryan Manow and Shengde Zhou
    Citation: Microbial Cell Factories 2013 12:57
    Content type: Research Published on:

  2. L(-)-carnitine production has been widely studied because of its beneficial properties on various diseases and dysfunctions. Enterobacteria possess a specific biotransformation pathway which can be used for th...

    Authors: Paula Arense, Vicente Bernal, Daniël Charlier, José Luis Iborra, Maria Remedios Foulquié-Moreno and Manuel Cánovas
    Citation: Microbial Cell Factories 2013 12:56
    Content type: Research Published on:

  3. Numerous microorganisms accumulate polyesters classified as polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs) as carbon and energy storage material when the growth condition is unfavorable in the presence of excess carbon source. ...

    Authors: Gi Na Lee and Jonguk Na
    Citation: Microbial Cell Factories 2013 12:54
    Content type: Commentary Published on:

  4. FK506 is an important immunosuppressant, which can be produced by Streptomyces tsukubaensis. However, the production capacity of the strain is very low. Hereby, a computational guided engineering approach was pro...

    Authors: Di Huang, Shanshan Li, Menglei Xia, Jianping Wen and Xiaoqiang Jia
    Citation: Microbial Cell Factories 2013 12:52
    Content type: Research Published on:

  5. Novel analytical tools, which shorten the long and costly development cycles of biopharmaceuticals are essential. Metabolic flux analysis (MFA) shows great promise in improving our understanding of the metabol...

    Authors: Mariana L Fazenda, Joao ML Dias, Linda M Harvey, Alison Nordon, Ruan Edrada-Ebel, David LittleJohn and Brian McNeil
    Citation: Microbial Cell Factories 2013 12:51
    Content type: Research Published on:

  6. Fungal polyketides include commercially important pharmaceuticals and food additives, e.g. the cholesterol-lowering statins and the red and orange monascus pigments. Presently, production relies on isolation o...

    Authors: Peter Rugbjerg, Michael Naesby, Uffe H Mortensen and Rasmus JN Frandsen
    Citation: Microbial Cell Factories 2013 12:31
    Content type: Research Published on:

  7. Finely regulating the carbon flux through the glycerol pathway by regulating the expression of the rate controlling enzyme, glycerol-3-phosphate dehydrogenase (GPDH), has been a promising approach to redirect ...

    Authors: Julien Pagliardini, Georg Hubmann, Sandrine Alfenore, Elke Nevoigt, Carine Bideaux and Stephane E Guillouet
    Citation: Microbial Cell Factories 2013 12:29
    Content type: Research Published on:

  8. Pachysolen tannophilus is a non-conventional yeast, which can metabolize many of the carbon sources found in low cost feedstocks including glycerol and xylose. The xylose utilisation pathways have been extensivel...

    Authors: Xiaoying Liu, Uffe Hasbro Mortensen and Mhairi Workman
    Citation: Microbial Cell Factories 2013 12:27
    Content type: Research Published on:

  9. Production of recombinant proteins in bacteria for academic and commercial purposes is a well established field; however the outcomes of process developments for specific proteins are still often unpredictable...

    Authors: Simone Balzer, Veronika Kucharova, Judith Megerle, Rahmi Lale, Trygve Brautaset and Svein Valla
    Citation: Microbial Cell Factories 2013 12:26
    Content type: Research Published on:

  10. In Escherichia coli many heterologous proteins are produced in the periplasm. To direct these proteins to the periplasm, they are equipped with an N-terminal signal sequence so that they can traverse the cytoplas...

    Authors: Susan Schlegel, Edurne Rujas, Anders Jimmy Ytterberg, Roman A Zubarev, Joen Luirink and Jan-Willem de Gier
    Citation: Microbial Cell Factories 2013 12:24
    Content type: Research Published on:

  11. Klebsiella oxytoca, a Gram-negative, rod-shaped, and facultative anaerobic bacterium, is one of the most promising 2,3-butanediol (2,3-BD) producers. In order to improve the metabolic performance of K. oxytoca as...

    Authors: Jong Myoung Park, Hyohak Song, Hee Jong Lee and Doyoung Seung
    Citation: Microbial Cell Factories 2013 12:20
    Content type: Research Published on:

  12. The Bacillus subtilis genome-reduced strain MGB874 exhibits enhanced production of exogenous extracellular enzymes under batch fermentation conditions. We predicted that deletion of the gene for RocG, a bi-functi...

    Authors: Kenji Manabe, Yasushi Kageyama, Takuya Morimoto, Eri Shimizu, Hiroki Takahashi, Shigehiko Kanaya, Katsutoshi Ara, Katsuya Ozaki and Naotake Ogasawara
    Citation: Microbial Cell Factories 2013 12:18
    Content type: Research Published on:

  13. Due to its abundance and low-price, glycerol has become an attractive carbon source for the industrial production of value-added fuels and chemicals. This work reports the engineering of E. coli for the efficient...

    Authors: Suman Mazumdar, Matthew D Blankschien, James M Clomburg and Ramon Gonzalez
    Citation: Microbial Cell Factories 2013 12:7
    Content type: OriginalPaper Published on:

  15. Yeast viability and vitality are essential for different industrial processes where the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae is used as a biotechnological tool. Therefore, the decline of yeast biological functions duri...

    Authors: Helena Orozco, Emilia Matallana and Agustín Aranda
    Citation: Microbial Cell Factories 2013 12:1
    Content type: Research Published on:

  16. Terpenoids and isoprenoids are an important class of natural products, which includes currently used drugs, high value bioactive and industrial compounds, and fuel candidates. Due to their industrial applicati...

    Authors: Codruta Ignea, Fotini A Trikka, Ioannis Kourtzelis, Anagnostis Argiriou, Angelos K Kanellis, Sotirios C Kampranis and Antonios M Makris
    Citation: Microbial Cell Factories 2012 11:162
    Content type: Research Published on:

  18. Flavonoids comprise a large family of secondary plant metabolic intermediates that exhibit a wide variety of antioxidant and human health-related properties. Plant production of flavonoids is limited by the lo...

    Authors: Frank Koopman, Jules Beekwilder, Barbara Crimi, Adele van Houwelingen, Robert D Hall, Dirk Bosch, Antonius JA van Maris, Jack T Pronk and Jean-Marc Daran
    Citation: Microbial Cell Factories 2012 11:155
    Content type: Research Published on:

  19. The phenylpropanoid metabolites are an extremely diverse group of natural products biosynthesized by plants, fungi, and bacteria. Although these compounds are widely used in human health care and nutrition ser...

    Authors: Sun-Young Kang, Oksik Choi, Jae Kyung Lee, Bang Yeon Hwang, Tai-Boong Uhm and Young-Soo Hong
    Citation: Microbial Cell Factories 2012 11:153
    Content type: Research Published on:

  20. A bacterial strain previously isolated from pyrite mine drainage and named BAS-10 was tentatively identified as Klebsiella oxytoca. Unlikely other enterobacteria, BAS-10 is able to grow on Fe(III)-citrate as sole...

    Authors: Giuseppe Gallo, Franco Baldi, Giovanni Renzone, Michele Gallo, Antonio Cordaro, Andrea Scaloni and Anna Maria Puglia
    Citation: Microbial Cell Factories 2012 11:152
    Content type: Research Published on:

  21. NAD-independent l-lactate dehydrogenase (l-iLDH) from Pseudomonas stutzeri SDM can potentially be used for the kinetic resolution of small aliphatic 2-hydroxycarboxylic acids. However, this enzyme showed rather l...

    Authors: Tianyi Jiang, Chao Gao, Peipei Dou, Cuiqing Ma, Jian Kong and Ping Xu
    Citation: Microbial Cell Factories 2012 11:151
    Content type: Research Published on:

  22. Recombinant proteins are routinely overexpressed in metabolic engineering. It is well known that some over-expressed heterologous recombinant enzymes are insoluble with little or no enzymatic activity. This st...

    Authors: Kang Zhou, Ruiyang Zou, Gregory Stephanopoulos and Heng-Phon Too
    Citation: Microbial Cell Factories 2012 11:148
    Content type: Research Published on:

  23. Synthetic biology approaches can make a significant contribution to the advance of metabolic engineering by reducing the development time of recombinant organisms. However, most of synthetic biology tools have...

    Authors: Pablo Ravasi, Salvador Peiru, Hugo Gramajo and Hugo G Menzella
    Citation: Microbial Cell Factories 2012 11:147
    Content type: Research Published on:

  24. E. coli is a robust host for various genetic manipulations and has been used commonly for bioconversion of hexose and pentose sugars into valuable products. One of the products that E. coli make under fermentativ...

    Authors: Neha Munjal, AnuJose Mattam, Dibyajyoti Pramanik, PremShankar Srivastava and Syed Shams Yazdani
    Citation: Microbial Cell Factories 2012 11:145
    Content type: Research Published on:

  25. In nature, mussel adhesive proteins (MAPs) show remarkable adhesive properties, biocompatibility, and biodegradability. Thus, they have been considered promising adhesive biomaterials for various biomedical an...

    Authors: Yoo Seong Choi, Yun Jung Yang, Byeongseon Yang and Hyung Joon Cha
    Citation: Microbial Cell Factories 2012 11:139
    Content type: Research Published on:

  26. Purine nucleotides exhibit various functions in cellular metabolism. Besides serving as building blocks for nucleic acid synthesis, they participate in signaling pathways and energy metabolism. Further, IMP an...

    Authors: Susanne Peifer, Tobias Barduhn, Sarah Zimmet, Dietrich A Volmer, Elmar Heinzle and Konstantin Schneider
    Citation: Microbial Cell Factories 2012 11:138
    Content type: Research Published on:

  27. Polyoxins are potent inhibitors of chitin synthetases in fungi and insects. The gene cluster responsible for biosynthesis of polyoxins has been cloned and sequenced from Streptomyces cacaoi and tens of polyoxin a...

    Authors: Jine Li, Lei Li, Chi Feng, Yihua Chen and Huarong Tan
    Citation: Microbial Cell Factories 2012 11:135
    Content type: Research Published on:

  28. Plasmid DNA (pDNA) is a promising molecule for therapeutic applications. pDNA is produced by Escherichia coli in high cell-density cultivations (HCDC) using fed-batch mode. The typical limitations of such cultiva...

    Authors: Gheorghe M Borja, Eugenio Meza Mora, Blanca Barrón, Guillermo Gosset, Octavio T Ramírez and Alvaro R Lara
    Citation: Microbial Cell Factories 2012 11:132
    Content type: Research Published on:

  29. Pyruvate-decarboxylase negative (Pdc-) strains of Saccharomyces cerevisiae combine the robustness and high glycolytic capacity of this yeast with the absence of alcoholic fermentation. This makes Pdc-S. cerevisia...

    Authors: Bart Oud, Carmen-Lisset Flores, Carlos Gancedo, Xiuying Zhang, Joshua Trueheart, Jean-Marc Daran, Jack T Pronk and Antonius JA van Maris
    Citation: Microbial Cell Factories 2012 11:131
    Content type: Research Published on:

  30. Microbial polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA) are biopolyesters consisting of diverse monomers. PHA synthase PhaC2Ps cloned from Pseudomonas stutzeri 1317 is able to polymerize short-chain-length (scl) 3-hydroxybutyrate ...

    Authors: Xue Gao, Xiao-Xi Yuan, Zhen-Yu Shi, Ying-Ying Guo, Xiao-Wen Shen, Jin-Chun Chen, Qiong Wu and Guo-Qiang Chen
    Citation: Microbial Cell Factories 2012 11:130
    Content type: Research Published on:

  31. In Escherichia coli phosphoenolpyruvate (PEP) is a key central metabolism intermediate that participates in glucose transport, as precursor in several biosynthetic pathways and it is involved in allosteric regula...

    Authors: Eugenio Meza, Judith Becker, Francisco Bolivar, Guillermo Gosset and Christoph Wittmann
    Citation: Microbial Cell Factories 2012 11:127
    Content type: Research Published on:

  32. Overflow metabolism is well known for yeast, bacteria and mammalian cells. It typically occurs under glucose excess conditions and is characterized by excretions of by-products such as ethanol, acetate or lact...

    Authors: Nicole Paczia, Anke Nilgen, Tobias Lehmann, Jochem Gätgens, Wolfgang Wiechert and Stephan Noack
    Citation: Microbial Cell Factories 2012 11:122
    Content type: Research Published on:

  33. The integration of biotechnology into chemical manufacturing has been recognized as a key technology to build a sustainable society. However, the practical applications of biocatalytic chemical conversions are...

    Authors: Xiaoting Ye, Kohsuke Honda, Takaaki Sakai, Kenji Okano, Takeshi Omasa, Ryuichi Hirota, Akio Kuroda and Hisao Ohtake
    Citation: Microbial Cell Factories 2012 11:120
    Content type: Research Published on:

  34. Sesquiterpenes are a class of natural products with a diverse range of attractive industrial proprieties. Due to economic difficulties of sesquiterpene production via extraction from plants or chemical synthes...

    Authors: Gionata Scalcinati, Siavash Partow, Verena Siewers, Michel Schalk, Laurent Daviet and Jens Nielsen
    Citation: Microbial Cell Factories 2012 11:117
    Content type: Research Published on:

  36. Isobutanol is considered as a leading candidate for the replacement of current fossil fuels, and expected to be produced biotechnologically. Owing to the valuable features, Bacillus subtilis has been engineered a...

    Authors: Shanshan Li, Di Huang, Yong Li, Jianping Wen and Xiaoqiang Jia
    Citation: Microbial Cell Factories 2012 11:101
    Content type: Research Published on:

  37. The understanding of the molecular basis of yeast tolerance to ethanol may guide the design of rational strategies to increase process performance in industrial alcoholic fermentations. A set of 21 genes encod...

    Authors: Miguel C Teixeira, Cláudia P Godinho, Tânia R Cabrito, Nuno P Mira and Isabel Sá-Correia
    Citation: Microbial Cell Factories 2012 11:98
    Content type: Research Published on:

  38. Omega-3 fatty acids eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) provide significant health benefits and this has led to an increased consumption as dietary supplements. Omega-3 fatty acids EPA a...

    Authors: T Catalina Adarme-Vega, David K Y Lim, Matthew Timmins, Felicitas Vernen, Yan Li and Peer M Schenk
    Citation: Microbial Cell Factories 2012 11:96
    Content type: Review Published on:

  39. Cyanobacteria possess several cytochrome P450s, but very little is known about their catalytic functions. CYP110 genes unique to cyanaobacteria are widely distributed in heterocyst-forming cyanobacteria including...

    Authors: Takuya Makino, Toshihiko Otomatsu, Kazutoshi Shindo, Emi Kitamura, Gerhard Sandmann, Hisashi Harada and Norihiko Misawa
    Citation: Microbial Cell Factories 2012 11:95
    Content type: Research Published on:

  40. A useful goal for metabolic engineering would be to generate non-growing but metabolically active quiescent cells which would divert the metabolic fluxes towards product formation rather than growth. However, ...

    Authors: Chaitali Ghosh, Rashmi Gupta and Krishna Jyoti Mukherjee
    Citation: Microbial Cell Factories 2012 11:93
    Content type: Research Published on: