Development of an in silico Tool of Novel Metabolic Pathway Designs for Microbial Productions

For countermeasures to problems of fossil material depletions or concerns over global environmental problems, technologies using non-fossil resources should be constructed in an urgent manner. However, most of useful chemicals synthesized from fossil material have not been produced by microorganisms because of the absence of the enzymatic reactions in cell. For microbial productions of non-biological compounds synthesized chemically from fossil materials, novel metabolic pathways should be constructed in a cell. In this study, an in silico tool was explored for searching for possibilities of enzymatic reactions. First, patterns of enzyme reactions registered in KEGG or BRENDA databases were recategorized focused on each enzyme active center. Second, information of metabolites were transferred into vectors for calculations. Finally, in silico novel metabolic pathways for target chemicals were found using the two information. This search tool, combined with thermodynamics simulations and flux balance analysis (FBA) for the optimal metabolic pathway design in a cell, was applied for founding useful but non-biological chemicals such as engineering plastics, rubber materials.