An Introduction to Metabolic and Cellular Engineering
by: S. Cortassa, M. A. Aon, A. A. Iglesias, D. Lloyd
en | World Scientific Publishing Company
9810248350 9789810248352 9789812388773
An Introduction to Metabolic and Cellular Engineering
By S. Cortassa, M. A. Aon, A. A. Iglesias, D. Lloyd
Publisher: World Scientific Publishing Company
Number Of Pages: 264
Publication Date: 2002-03-01
ISBN-10 / ASIN: 9810248350
ISBN-13 / EAN: 9789810248352
Product Description:
Metabolic and cellular engineering, as presented in this book, is a powerful alliance of two technologies: genetics-molecular biology and fermentation technology. Both are driven by continuous refinement of the basic understanding of metabolism, physiology and cellular biology (growth, division, differentiation), as well as the development of new mathematical modeling techniques. The authors' approach is original in that it integrates several disciplines into a coordinated scheme, i.e. microbial physiology and bioenergetics, thermodynamics and enzyme kinetics, biomathematics and biochemistry, genetics and molecular biology. Thus, it is called a transdisciplinary approach (TDA). The TDA provides the basis for the rational design of microorganisms or cells in a way that has rarely been utilized to its full extent.
Contents: Matter and Energy Balances; Cell Growth and Metabolite Production. Basic Concepts; Methods of Quantitation of Cellular "Processes Performance"; Dynamic Aspects of Bioprocess Behavior; Bioprocess Development with Plant Cells; Cellular Engineering.
Summary: A good introduction to a field with enormous ramifications
Rating: 4
As the authors say in the introduction to this book, metabolic and cellular engineering, or MCE, is not yet an established subject, and so any book that attempts to summarize what is being done in the field will become rapidly out of date. For those interested in the field, biologists and non-biologists alike, the book offers a good overview of what type of research is currently being done. MCE is dependent to a large extent on what can be done in genetic engineering, like for example the need to integrate stable cloned genes into the chromosomes of host organisms. Needless to say if the techniques used in MCE are successful this has enormous consequences for health and the environment. To be able to tune the cellular and metabolic processes according to a preconceived plan is an awesome development, and is a project that should be pursued aggressively in the upcoming years. MCE also makes heavy use of mathematical and computational tools, and so mathematicians or computational physicists interested in entering the field will find the book useful. The field of MCE presents many challenges in mathematical modeling due to the sheer number of processes and metabolic pathways that must be accounted for and the biological and biochemical knowledge that must be mastered beforehand. The authors encapsulate all of this background, consisting of microbial physiology and bioenergetics, thermodynamics and enzyme kinetics, biochemistry, computational biology, etc into what they call a `transdisciplinary approach' (TDA), which they outline in fair detail in the first chapter of the book. Essentially this approach consists first of taking a microorganism or strain and performing physiological and bioenergetic studies to determine a state of `balanced growth'. This allows the investigator to determine whether the microorganism can exhibit the desired behavior of the metabolic design engineer. This is followed by the mathematical modeling of the metabolic processes and bioenergetic behavior, in order to determine the rate-controlling steps of the flux or the level of metabolites in a metabolic pathway. Then techniques from genetic engineering are used to over express the enzymes that control the metabolic flux. Thus the microorganism is modified so as to optimize the desired biotransformation process. The last step of TDA consists of accessing the success of the engineered microorganism after it is subjected to the first three steps. As MCE matures, one can easily see the day when microorganisms or other more complex organisms can be engineered according to a chosen template. The authors include a table that gives a large number of examples of developments in metabolic engineering in the first chapter.
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