Publications related to Metabolic engineering

Modeling, analysis, and design of complex biological networks

Automating experimental procedures has resulted in an unprecedented increase in the volume of generated data, which, in turn, has caused an accumulation of unprocessed data. As a result, the need to develop tools to analyze data systematically has been ris ...

EPFL2023

Expanding computational biochemistry towards complex and non-natural compounds

Anastasia Sveshnikova

In the beginning was the metabolism. The biochemical processes that make life possible transformed the soup of chemicals into the life on Earth we know today. Since then, living organisms have evolved, and life on Earth has become more complex. Living orga ...

EPFL2023

Computational tools and resources for designing new pathways to small molecules

Vassily Hatzimanikatis, Anastasia Sveshnikova

The metabolic engineering community relies on computational methods for pathway design to produce important small molecules in microbial hosts. Metabolic network databases are continuously curated and updated with known and novel reactions that expand the ...

CURRENT BIOLOGY LTD2022

An optimized high throughput platform, from genetic transformation to fermentation, to screen for secreted laccases in Aspergillus niger

Laure Marie Colette Leynaud-Kieffer Curran

Many challenges are faced in the conversion of biomass into advanced biofuels, one of which is finding the correct organism for the job. The filamentous fungus Aspergillus niger has been chosen as a biocatalyst for cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin degr ...

EPFL2021

Constraint-based metabolic control analysis for rational strain engineering

Vassily Hatzimanikatis, Ljubisa Miskovic, Meriç Ataman, Tuure Eelis Hameri, Sofia Tsouka

The advancements in genome editing techniques over the past years have rekindled interest in rational metabolic engineering strategies. While Metabolic Control Analysis (MCA) is a well-established method for quantifying the effects of metabolic engineering ...

2021

NICEpath: Finding metabolic pathways in large networks through atom-conserving substrate-product pairs

Vassily Hatzimanikatis, Jasmin Maria Hafner

Motivation: Finding biosynthetic pathways is essential for metabolic engineering of organisms to produce chemicals, biodegradation prediction of pollutants and drugs, and for the elucidation of bioproduction pathways of secondary metabolites. A key step in ...

OXFORD UNIV PRESS2021

Modelling the Intracellular Environment under Uncertainty, from Post-translational Modification to Metabolic Networks

Robin Alexander Denhardt-Eriksson

Modelling and analysis of biological systems is crucial in order to quantitatively explain and predict their behaviour. The importance of modelling in systems biology becomes even more evident when tackling complex, large systems. Approaches that rely on ...

EPFL2021

A computational workflow for the expansion of heterologous biosynthetic pathways to natural product derivatives

Vassily Hatzimanikatis, Jasmin Maria Hafner

Plant natural products (PNPs) and their derivatives are important but underexplored sources of pharmaceutical molecules. To access this untapped potential, the reconstitution of heterologous PNP biosynthesis pathways in engineered microbes provides a valua ...

Nature Research2021

New and improved methods for integrated models of metabolism and gene expression

Pierre Guy Rémy Salvy

The beginning of the 21st century was marked by the advent of disruptive technologies, which ushered an era of groundbreaking advances in fundamental sciences, carried by the great pace at which computational capabilities spread and evolved. But the new ce ...

EPFL2021

The effects of model complexity and size on metabolic flux distribution and control: case study in Escherichia coli

Vassily Hatzimanikatis, Georgios Fengos, Tuure Eelis Hameri

Background Significant efforts have been made in building large-scale kinetic models of cellular metabolism in the past two decades. However, most kinetic models published to date, remain focused around central carbon pathways or are built around ad hoc re ...

BMC2021

Mapping and Analysis of the Complexity of Lipid Metabolism for Applications in Health and Sustainability

Vassily Hatzimanikatis, Sofia Tsouka

Metabolism is a network of biotransformations that sustain life in cells. Over the past decades, metabolism has been studied in multiple contexts, ranging from medicine to industrial manufacturing. In particular, lipid metabolism has been linked to various ...

EPFL2020

Modeling, predicting and mining metabolism at atom-level resolution

Jasmin Maria Hafner

Living organisms can catalyze many thousands of biochemical reactions that they use to convert energy and matter, which provides them with the essentials for life. The sum of these chemical reactions happening in an organism is called metabo-lism. Understa ...

EPFL2020

Functional and Computational Genomics Reveal Unprecedented Flexibility in Stage-Specific Toxoplasma Metabolism

Vassily Hatzimanikatis, Anush Chiappino-Pepe, Matteo Lunghi, Damien Lionel Nicolas, Aarti Krishnan, Dominique Soldati-Favre

To survive and proliferate in diverse host environments with varying nutrient availability, the obligate intracellular parasite Toxoplasma gondii reprograms its metabolism. We have generated and curated a genome-scale metabolic model (iTgo) for the fast-re ...

CELL PRESS2020

Large-scale kinetic metabolic models of Pseudomonas putida KT2440 for consistent design of metabolic engineering strategies

Vassily Hatzimanikatis, Ljubisa Miskovic, Milenko Tokic

Background: Pseudomonas putida is a promising candidate for the industrial production of biofuels and biochemicals because of its high tolerance to toxic compounds and its ability to grow on a wide variety of substrates. Engineering this organism for impro ...

2020

Modeling metabolic and signaling pathways in cancer cells

Maria Masid Barcon

Cancer is a leading cause of death in the world, and the mechanisms that underlie this disease are still not completely understood. As cancer develops and progresses, cells undergo a diversity of mutations that sustain their rapid proliferation and the eva ...

EPFL2020

Towards comprehensive and consistent kinetic models of metabolism under uncertainty

Tuure Eelis Hameri

Metabolism is the sum of the chemical interactions occurring inside a cell that process nutrients into cellular constituents and energy. Research in the recent decades has enabled the characterization of metabolic reaction networks for multiple organisms. ...

EPFL2019

Uncertainty reduction in biochemical kinetic models: Enforcing desired model properties

Vassily Hatzimanikatis, Ljubisa Miskovic, Michaël Roger Germain Moret

A persistent obstacle for constructing kinetic models of metabolism is uncertainty in the kinetic properties of enzymes. Currently, available methods for building kinetic models can cope indirectly with uncertainties by integrating data from different biol ...

2019

Kinetic models of metabolism that consider alternative steady-state solutions of intracellular fluxes and concentrations

Vassily Hatzimanikatis, Ljubisa Miskovic, Meriç Ataman, Georgios Fengos, Tuure Eelis Hameri

Large-scale kinetic models are used for designing, predicting, and understanding the metabolic responses of living cells. Kinetic models are particularly attractive for the biosynthesis of target molecules in cells as they are typically better than other t ...

2019

Computational studies of industrial hosts for improved production of the 2nd generation of biofuels

Milenko Tokic

In an effort of overcoming the limited availability of fossil energy resources and moving toward a sustainable economy, the focus of the research and development in the area of biofuels has shifted towards developing the 2nd generation of fuels that should ...

EPFL2019

Analysis of cellular and drug action mechanisms in the malaria parasites using systems biology approaches

Anush Chiappino-Pepe

Malaria puts at risk of infection half of the world population and still kills around half a million people every year. The rapid and worrisome rise of drug-resistant malaria parasites hinders the treatment of malaria and calls for a global collaboration t ...

EPFL2018