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Expanding the metabolic engineering toolbox with directed evolution
Author(s) -
Abatemarco Joseph,
Hill Andrew,
Alper Hal S.
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
biotechnology journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.144
H-Index - 84
eISSN - 1860-7314
pISSN - 1860-6768
DOI - 10.1002/biot.201300021
Subject(s) - metabolic engineering , directed evolution , toolbox , context (archaeology) , computer science , directed molecular evolution , synthetic biology , biochemical engineering , protein engineering , computational biology , metabolic pathway , genome engineering , biology , genome , engineering , gene , genome editing , genetics , enzyme , biochemistry , paleontology , mutant , programming language
Cellular systems can be engineered into factories that produce high‐value chemicals from renewable feedstock. Such an approach requires an expanded toolbox for metabolic engineering. Recently, protein engineering and directed evolution strategies have started to play a growing and critical role within metabolic engineering. This review focuses on the various ways in which directed evolution can be applied in conjunction with metabolic engineering to improve product yields. Specifically, we discuss the application of directed evolution on both catalytic and non‐catalytic traits of enzymes, on regulatory elements, and on whole genomes in a metabolic engineering context. We demonstrate how the goals of metabolic pathway engineering can be achieved in part through evolving cellular parts as opposed to traditional approaches that rely on gene overexpression and deletion. Finally, we discuss the current limitations in screening technology that hinder the full implementation of a metabolic pathway‐directed evolution approach.