Importance of understanding the main metabolic regulation in response to the specific pathway mutation for metabolic engineering of Escherichia coli

Recent metabolic engineering practice was briefly reviewed in particular for the useful metabolite production such as natural products and biofuel productions. With the emphasis on systems biology approach, the metabolic regulation of the main metabolic pathways in E. coli was discussed from the points of view of enzyme level (allosteric and phosphorylation/ dephosphorylation) regulation, and gene level (transcriptional) regulation. Then the effects of the specific pathway gene knockout such as pts, pgi, zwf, gnd, pyk, ppc, pckA, lpdA, pfl gene knockout on the metabolism in E. coli were overviewed from the systems biology point of view with possible application for strain improvement point.