Optimizing Metabolic Pathways for the Improved Production of Natural Products

Metabolic engineering strives to develop microbial strains that are capable of high-titer production of a variety of industrially significant pharmaceuticals, nutraceuticals, commodity, and high-value compounds. Despite extensive success with many proof-of-concept systems there is still the need for optimization to achieve industrially relevant titers, yields, and productivities. The field of metabolic pathway optimization and balancing has formed to address this need using a scientific and systematic approach. In this chapter, we aim to outline various pathway optimization and system balancing strategies while giving insights and tips into the systems and procedures that have demonstrated recent success in the peer-reviewed literature.