After a decade of progress, an expanded role for metabolic engineering.

Over the past decade, metabolic engineering has emerged as an active and distinct discipline characterized by its over-arching emphasis on integration. In practice, metabolic engineering is the directed improvement of cellular properties through the application of modern genetic methods. Although it was applied on an ad hoc basis for several years following the introduction of recombinant techniques [1,2], metabolic engineering was formally defined as a new field approximately a decade ago [3]. Since that time, many creative applications, directed primarily to metabolite overproduction, have been reported [4]. In parallel, recent advances in the resolution and acquisition time of biological data, especially structural and functional genomics, has amplified interest in the systemic view of biology that metabolic engineering provides. To facilitate the burgeoning scientific exchange in this area on a more regular and convenient basis, a new conference series was launched in 1996 followed by a new journal in 1999.