SynBio6: Metabolic Engineering (v1.0)

In 1991 James Bailey defined metabolic engineering as "the improvement of cellular activities by manipulation of enzymatic, transport, and regulatory functions in the cell with the use of Recombinant DNA technology". Recombinant DNA (DNA derived by combining DNA from more than one source) was a precursor to SynBio in the 1990's. Metabolic engineering had been in practice for several decades. SynBio supercharges Metabolic engineering by vastly decreasing both cost and time. It turns cells into cell factories. 

Let us take a great showcase example of SynBio and metabolic engineering. In Chinese medicine, a plant named sweet wormwood has been used to treat malaria fever for almost 2000 years. Chinese researcher Tu Youyou isolated its active ingredient Artemisinin for which she got a Nobel prize in 2015. Sweet wormwood is still used as a traditional cure for malaria. The demand though far exceeded the supply. Using metabolic engineering, SynBio came to the rescue. Scientist Jay Keasling used synthetic biology and metabolic engineering techniques for production of Artemisinin in volume. Various optimizations further improved the yield. The Bill and Melinda gates foundation's philanthropy along with others also significantly contributed to the emergence of the drug. Other drugs like Hydroxychloroquine were also developed for malaria. 

There are various metabolic pathways used in e-coli as it converts its food glucose into ATP (adenosine Triphosphate) for energy. The pathway can be hijacked to produce something else you want like Artemisinin by changing the cells genes to produce the right enzyme, protein. etc. Besides e-coli as an organism of choice to convert into a cell factory, yeast is also often used and some of its pathway hijacked to produce something else you want. 

Some of the materials we produce using cell factories may not always have complete scientific consensus on whether or not we should even be making them.  Some of the substances may be controversial in nature. Mushrooms are used in the production of Psilocybin (a psychedelic), which is the active ingredient of magic mushrooms. In the late 1990's some controlled research was done in the treatment of severe depression, anxiety reduction, terminal cancer patents, and PTSD including FDA approval for clinical trials. Some of the trial results were quite successful. Demand has skyrocketed and supply can't keep up. SynBio can produce a semisynthetic biological pathway that can be optimized and incorporated into a simple yet productive microbe. The production is then ramped up to an industrial scale. This is exactly what scientists are working on.