A perspective of metabolic engineering strategies: moving up the systems hierarchy.

Metabolic engineering has been established as an important field in biotechnology. It involves the analysis, design, and alteration of the stoichiometric network using sophisticated mathematical and molecular biology techniques. It allows for improvement of pathway kinetics by removing flux bottlenecks, balancing precursors, and recycling cofactors used to increase product formation. The next step in the systems hierarchy is the constructive manipulation of regulatory networks. As our understanding of regulation continues to expand rapidly, engineering of intracellular regulation will become an integral aspect of metabolic engineering. Copyright 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.