Metabolic pathway balancing and its role in the production of biofuels and chemicals

• Rational and modern approaches for metabolic pathway engineering.
• Tailor-made cell factories for biofuel and value-added chemical production.
• Synthetic and systems biology advancements for metabolic engineering.
• Dynamic balancing and regulation via intracellular metabolite monitoring.
• Pathway spatial organization and compartmentalization to increase product titers.

In the last decade, metabolic engineering benefited greatly from systems and synthetic biology due to substantial advancements in those fields. As a result, technologies and methods evolved to be more complex and controllable than ever. In this review, we highlight up-to-date case studies using these techniques, examine their potential, and stress their importance for production of compounds such as fatty acids, alcohols, and high value chemicals. Beginning with basic rational control techniques and continuing with advanced level modern approaches, we review the vast number of possibilities for controlling metabolic fluxes. Our aim is to give a brief and informative insight about commonly used tools and universalized methodologies for metabolic pathway balancing and optimization.

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