Brief Introduction to the Project onSystems Metabolic Engineering for Bioref ineries

摘要

Due to the increasing concerns on climate change, resource limitations and sustainability issues, and to reduce the dependence on fossil resources in petrochemical industry, there have been interests in developing bio-based chemical industry through establishing successful bio-refineries.Microorganisms, corresponding to the chemical plant converting a raw material to a product of interest, have been increasingly employed for the production of chemicals, fuels and materials from non-food renewable biomass. Microorganisms isolated from Nature are inherently low in performance indices. Therefore, the metabolic and cellular networks have to be engineered to improve and to optimize its performance. Such metabolicengineering has been around for a little more than two decades, and it is being further advanced through the integration with other sub-disciplines such as systems biology, synthetic biology, and evolutionary engineering, resulting in the birth of systems metabolic engineering. We have been working on the project on developing platform technologies for the systems metabolic engineering of microorganisms for establishing successful bio-refineries through the research project funded by the Korean Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning (through National Research Foundation).