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Metabolic engineering

From retrofitting to green field

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Metabolic engineers have long sought a rational approach to designing hybrid organisms with unique biosynthetic capabilities. Combining in silico pathway discovery with genome-scale modeling has now provided an engineered Escherichia coli capable of producing the unnatural fermentation product 1,4-butanediol at near-commercial levels.

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Figure 1: In silico design of the BDO strain.

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  1. Lars K. Nielsen is at the Australian Institute for Bioengineering & Nanotechnology, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia.,

    Lars K Nielsen

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  1. Lars K Nielsen
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Correspondence to Lars K Nielsen.

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Nielsen, L. From retrofitting to green field. Nat Chem Biol 7, 408–409 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/nchembio.601

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