Introduction to Pathway Design

Metabolic pathways reflect the chemical repertoire of organisms. The primary goal of metabolic pathway design is to identify possible biological interventions and modifications that can be engineered in the cell in order to achieve the desired behavior. The main design ideas include modulation of metabolic flux, expansion of existing metabolic pathways, and construction of novel metabolic pathways.

In the follow-up pathway engineering, biological data and engineering principles will be used to assemble intricate metabolic pathways and genetic circuits. Finally, the metabolite yield of natural systems can be optimized, or novel exogenous metabolite-producing biological systems can be created.

Figure 1. A conceptualized pathway design workflow. (Wang L, et al., 2017)