Metabolic Engineering for Over Production of Metabolites - We discussed how proteins can be modified in a desired manner to suit specific needs for their industrial or other specific uses. In these cases discussed in, the three dimensional structure of the protein was dependent on the DNA sequence of a gene, which could be suitably modified to get the desired gene product.

However, often we are interested in getting metabolites produced in the cell, at an industrial level. However, cells metabolic networks that evolved in nature are not optimized for practical applications. In such cases, performance of metabolic pathways or bioprocesses can be modified (deregulated) by genetic manipulation of the cell, so that the metabolite is overproduced.

This may involve not only biosynthesis of a metabolite, but may also involve manipulation of protein processing pathways. Metabolic engineering, at present, is only a collection of examples, which promise not only future technological benefits, but also contribute to basic science, agriculture and medicine.

One should, however, recognize that although in a particular case, metabolic engineering might have been shown to be feasible, the strains thus developed may still be unsuitable for practical yield, so that the limitations may still need to be addressed by subsequent genetic manipulations.

The possibilities, achievements and in1itations of the approach of metabolic engineering as another subject of biotechnology