A review of genome-scale metabolic flux modeling of anaerobiosis in biotechnology

• Genome-scale metabolic flux modeling of anaerobiosis is expanding.
• Redox influences genome-wide metabolic flux and product formation.
• Several new genome-scale models for obligate anaerobes have been validated.
• Focuses include CO/CO2 utilization, remediation, solventogenesis, methanogenesis.
• New tools exists to build models, improve accuracy, and aid metabolic engineering.

The genome-scale metabolic flux modeling of anaerobic metabolism relevant to biotechnology has recently expanded in focus. In particular, there is interest in modeling facultative anaerobes (including yeast) to learn how to effectively eliminate microaerobic environments in favor of anaerobiosis. This is advantageous to bioprocessing and maximizes product formation from metabolic pathways that require substantial reducing power. Recent modeling efforts have also focused on CO/CO2 and lignocellulosic sugar utilization for the production of advanced biofuels and chemicals. Several genome-scale models (GEMs), representing diverse metabolic traits, now exist for the non-pathogenic clostridia, methanogen, and Geobacter spp. obligate anaerobes, and microbial consortia interactions are now being modeled. Several new modeling tools to automate GEM construction, incorporate −omics datasets, and derive metabolic engineering strategies can now apply to anaerobiosis.