Tag: genetic engineering

Manipulation of an organism’s metabolism lies at the heart of metabolic engineering

August 7, 2023

Since 2000s, there has been much interest in the use of metabolic engineering to create organisms able to synthesize a variety of useful chemical compounds such as biofuels, drugs, and speciality chemicals. So, what is metabolic engineering? At the heart of metabolic engineering is a sequence of carefully choreographed genetic engineering steps that express new … More Manipulation of an organism’s metabolism lies at the heart of metabolic engineering

Protein engineering as tool to improve enzymes

July 28, 2023

Enzymes are at the heart of modern biotechnology with wide-reaching and varied applications in daily life. However, most enzymes are optimized for use in the cellular context, and perform poorly when employed in other application areas or scenarios. One example is the enzymes in modern washing powder. Hence, protein engineering may be used to improve … More Protein engineering as tool to improve enzymes

The essence of metabolic engineering

January 16, 2022

Since the advent of genetic engineering tools in the 1970s, biologists have dreamed about the possibility of using the newly discovered tools to engineer new properties or functions in different microbial species. The first goal back then was the development of strains able to make difficult to make biomolecules or proteins cheaply. This led to … More The essence of metabolic engineering

Thermodynamic considerations in metabolic engineering

February 22, 2021

Whether chemical or biological reactions, free energy is the driving force for the transformation of substrates to products. Thus, a reaction must be thermodynamically feasible before it would proceed. Or, in other words, a reaction must have a negative Gibbs free energy prior to product formation. Metabolic engineering seeks to overproduce a particular molecule (whether … More Thermodynamic considerations in metabolic engineering

Research in metabolic engineering is restricted to a few model organisms

January 6, 2021

Metabolic engineering is the scientific pursuit of engineering cells to produce desired chemicals and metabolites of use to society. These products could be drugs or nutraceuticals. Using the tools of modern genetic engineering and genome editing, endogenous metabolism of cells is rewired in metabolic engineering to redirect metabolic flux to desired pathways powering the production … More Research in metabolic engineering is restricted to a few model organisms

Much of a yeast promoter may be redundant

December 14, 2019

Promoters in yeast are typically longer than those in bacterial species. Hence, in synthetic biology applications, plasmids constructed for use in yeast would contain long stretches of promoter together with the target gene. Given that each gene in yeast requires a dedicated promoter unlike the case in bacterial species where a single promoter could help … More Much of a yeast promoter may be redundant

Remaking photosynthesis for increasing crop yield

April 29, 2019

Feature article in Nature, Vol. 544, Issue 7651, pp. S11-S13, “Solar upgrade”   Summary of article: Crop production could be severely impacted by rising carbon dioxide concentration in the air as well as global warming. Thus, a slew of efforts is underway in major researcher centres around the world focussing on enhancing photosynthesis for increasing … More Remaking photosynthesis for increasing crop yield

Gene synthesis is replacing traditional molecular cloning of genes in genetic engineering

February 11, 2019

The first step of genetic engineering is typically the identification of a candidate gene in a species that is useful for a reaction not found in the organism of interest such as Escherichia coli. This is followed by the cloning of the candidate gene from the species and its insertion into a plasmid for expression … More Gene synthesis is replacing traditional molecular cloning of genes in genetic engineering

Remaking photosynthesis for increasing crop yield

July 17, 2017

Feature article in Nature, Vol. 544, Issue 7651, pp. S11-S13, “Solar upgrade”   Summary of article: Crop production could be severely impacted by rising carbon dioxide concentration in the air as well as global warming. Thus, a slew of efforts is underway in major researcher centres around the world, focusing on enhancing photosynthesis for increasing … More Remaking photosynthesis for increasing crop yield