Coping with complexity in metabolic engineering

In the past decade, systems biology has revealed great metabolic and regulatory complexity even in seemingly simple microbial systems. Metabolic engineering aims to control this complexity in order to establish sustainable and economically viable production routes for valuable chemicals. Recent advances in systems-level data generation and modeling of cellular metabolism and regulation together with tremendous progress in synthetic biology will provide the tools to put biotechnologists on the fast track for implementing novel production processes. Great potential lies in the reduction of cellular complexity by orthogonalization of metabolic modules. Here, we review recent advances that will eventually enable metabolic engineers to predict, design, and build streamlined microbial cell factories with reduced time and effort.