Metabolic systems modeling for cell factories improvement

•Recent developments of mathematical modeling have facilitated strain design.•Robustness for stability has emerged as an important criterion for strain design.•Data acquisition and managing techniques are in need in modern systems biology.

Techniques for modeling microbial bioproduction systems have evolved over many decades. Here, we survey recent literature and focus on modeling approaches for improving bioproduction. These techniques from systems biology are based on different methodologies, starting from stoichiometry only to various stoichiometry with kinetics approaches that address different issues in metabolic systems. Techniques to overcome unknown kinetic parameters using random sampling have emerged to address meaningful questions. Among those questions, pathway robustness seems to be an important issue for metabolic engineering. We also discuss the increasing significance of databases in biology and their potential impact for biotechnology.