Modelling of the metabolism of Escherichia coli for the bio-based production of 1,4-BDO

Sammanfattning

The search for greener ways of producing plastic has been a very popular field for the last few years. One avenue of research focuses on separating plastic production from the fossil fuel industry by finding bio-based alternatives. This is the case of the research conducted by our collaborators at Biotechnology who are trying to use Escherichia coli to produce 1,4-butanediol, a precursor to many plastic products. In this project we explore genome-scale metabolic models and flux balance analysis as computational tools to model the metabolism of E. coli with the objective to guide experimental research. We incorporated enzymatic constrains by means of the ECMpy modelling approach. We successfully added the pathway that produces 1,4-butanediol to the model and, by combining the overexpression and suppression of key reactions, we managed to get the model to achieve theoretical production.