Engineering Metabolic Pathways

Introduction 

In the era of technological advancement, biomedical engineering has developed a variety of options to meet the requirements of both health and industry. In this assignment we are going to discuss some questions. What are the engineering metabolic pathways? What are metabolic pathways? How can Glycolysis be described? The “Metabolic engineering” is a procedure of analyzing the regulatory and genetic processes into the cells to grow the production of cells of a certain structure. Consequently, the trades in “metabolic engineering” appear between the capacities to build the required structure of the cells and needed natural things to survive. This assignment is going to analyze the primary keyword Complement activation and the secondary keywords such as Engineering Metabolic Pathways, Glucose metabolism pathway, Basic metabolic pathways, Glycolysis, Energy balance of a cell.

Engineering Metabolic Pathways 

Metabolic engineering has a particular aim of using microbes for producing cost effective as well as huge numbers of secondary metabolites. The production of a huge amount of secondary metabolites has been taken into practice for producing fuel and other chemicals in the commercial industries. In these biochemical pathways, the use of engineering metabolic pathway researchers have found a new dimension of developing biochemical through a variety of approaches that has not only increased the yield but has also minimized the cost of producing these end products. The main objective of this metabolic engineering has been found to be a systematic analysis of the metabolic as well as the other pathways with the molecular biological techniques for improving cellular properties. This technique is  also developed  for the improvement of products by designing as well as implementing the “rational genetic modifications”.

Metabolic Pathways

Metabolic pathways help to connect the sequence of “chemical reactions” which are occurring in the cells.  The metabolic pathways calculation mainly can be done by pen and paper if it is simple, other than that it needs software to calculate the computations. “Complex linear algebra algorithms” is mainly used to solve this programme. The information of the question can be shown as:  reactants and stoichiometry are presented in matrices “Gx” and “Gm” respectively, the fluxes of the reaction are presented as “Vm and Vx”, where Vx is the unknown flux which need to be calculate. 

The equation of this reaction is:

V_{x}=- (G_{x}) ^ {-1}* (G_{m} *V_{m})}V_x = -(G_x) ^ {-1} * (G_m * V_m)

Glucose metabolism pathway

Glucose metabolism or carbohydrate metabolism is a normal phrase for any “metabolic activities”. “Glucose metabolism” is a procedure which helps to break down the consuming carbohydrates into small parts of sugar which ultimately turn into glucose. The glucose metabolism pathway has mainly four parts such as “glucose transport and phosphorylation, Glycolysis, glycogen synthesis, pentose phosphate pathway, and hexosamine biosynthesis pathway”. The process “Glucose metabolism pathway” is completed through the three steps such as Glycolysis along with the Krebs cycle and oxidative phosphorylation.

Basic metabolic pathways

The basic metabolic pathways are the Krebs cycle and oxidative phosphorylation in the human body. On the other hand, the plants produce metabolites through these pathways which are Shikimic acid pathways along with Acetate pathways and Amino acid pathways. Through the oxidization of acetate all the “aerobic organisms” create energy by using the chemical reaction of the Krebs cycle. The “Oxidative phosphorylation” is a procedure where energy is exploited through a sequence of protein complexes immersed in the “inner-membrane of mitochondria”.

Glycolysis

Glycolysis is a biological pathway that breaks down the glucose molecules to synthesize pyruvic acid. In association with a different set of enzymatic activities, glucose molecules turn into fructose and in the consecutive steps it becomes di-hydroxy-acetone phosphate. In the whole process, four molecules of adenosine tri-phosphate (ATP) are transformed into adenosine di-phosfate (ADP) releasing chemical energy for the pathway to be completed. In the last steps, the dihydroxy-acetone phosphate transformed into phosphor-enol-pyruvate and consecutively into pyruvic acid with the enzymatic action of pyruvate kinase.

Energy balance of a cell

In biology, the  energy homeostasis, also called the homeostatic control of the energy balance, can be described as a biological process involved with the coordination of homeostatic “regulation of food intake (energy inflow)” and “energy expenditure (energy outflow)”. The energy balance of a cell is of three types including “positive energy balance”, “negative energy balance”, and “perfect balance”. 

Energy balance can be calculated with the formula:

“Energy intake (from food and fluids) = Energy expended (through work and heat generated) + Change in stored energy (body fat and glycogen storage)”.

Conclusion 

This assignment is about the engineering metabolic pathway. The cells get their required energy by the energy consuming and also energy producing process. Glucose metabolism is both anabolic metabolism which is energy consuming and catabolic metabolism which is energy producing. The “glucose metabolism pathway” is completed through the three steps such as Glycolysis; the Krebs cycle; and oxidative phosphorylation. The important part of glucose metabolism pathways is Glycolysis and the other basic parts are the Krebs cycle and oxidative phosphorylation.