S183: Metabolic engineering using genome-scale metabolic model for superior cell factories

To achieve the industrial bioproduction for the sustainable production of energy and chemicals by replacement of petroleum, superior cell factories with high productivity of such targets are in high demand. For the efficient molecular breeding to enhance the production, development of in silico metabolic model which can estimate the metabolic flux change by gene manipulation is desired. Flux balance analysis (FBA) using genome-scale metabolic model is a powerful tool to predict how the metabolic profile depends on genetic manipulations or culture conditions. We have reconstructed genome-scale metabolic models of important microorganisms for bioproduction such as Corynebacterium glutamicum, and cyanobacterium Synechocystis sp. PCC6803. To verify the FBA results of these models, we compared with experimental results of metabolite profiles and ¹³C tracer metabolic flux analysis, and found good agreements between them. Furthermore, we performed in silico screening of multi-gene deletion to identify candidate genes to be manipulated for enhancement of target production. In this session, we will present the reconstructions of genome-scale metabolic models of these microorganisms, and application of these models to create the engineering strategy for superior cell factories.