Computational Design of Novel Enzymes and Metabolic Pathways for Industrial Biotechnology
Synthetic Biology Engineering Evolution Design SEED
2017
2017 Synthetic Biology: Engineering, Evolution & Design (SEED)
General Submissions
Session 11: Mathematical Modeling and Design
Friday, June 23, 2017 - 10:00am to 10:30am
The second challenge is that of finding optimal ways to arrange natural and designed enzymes to biosynthetize a small-molecule of interest. To illustrate our progress towards solving this challenge, we will discuss a novel computational tool that Arzeda has developed for the automated design of novel biosynthetic pathways. Inspired by retrosynthetic methods in organic chemistry, our software draws on databases of known natural enzymatic reactions as well as reactions that can be catalyzed by designed enzymes to exhaustively enumerate biosynthetic routes from a set of desired metabolites down to any small molecule of interest. Pathways are ranked based on thermodynamic feasibility and other metrics. We will discuss applications of industrial relevance in the field of fine and bulk chemicals.