Jens Nielsen: Metabolic Engineering

Lecture by Professor Jens Nielsen, BioInnovation Institute, Copenhagen, at the Molecular Frontiers Symposium "Frontiers of New Knowledge in Science" in Hong Kong, Nov 15-17, 2024. ABSTRACT New insight into cellular metabolism from the use of mathematical models Cells' metabolism is central to their ability to grow and divide. It ensures that nutrients are converted into energy and building blocks, e.g. amino acids, which can be used to synthesize proteins, DNA, lipids and the many other components that make up a living cell. The metabolism of cells has been mapped by detailed biochemical studies over the last 100 years, where the individual chemical reactions have been identified together with the enzymes that catalyze the individual reactions. We thus have an overview of all the many chemical reactions that take place in a cell, and in a yeast cell there are more than 4,000 chemical reactions associated with more than 1,100 proteins, while in human cells there are close to 13,000 identified reactions associated with close at 3,000 proteins. By using mathematical models, it is possible to collect all information about the metabolism of cells and thus study how the many different reactions affect each other. In the presentation, I will present how these models not only can be used in basic studies of cell metabolism, but also they can also be used within biotechnology and human medicine.