Proceedings of The Évry Spring School on M odelling C

From growing oil prices and the expected shortage of raw materials of fossil origin during the next decades, the fermentation-based processes for (bio)chemical production arises that are based on the exploitation of renewable resources. The product family of amino acids represents a particularly striking example for our growing technological ability to replace petrol-based syntheses of bulk chemicals by production processes. The amino acid methionine and its hydroxyl analog (HMTB), which is key for poultry production, and reaches an annual production volume of ≈ 800.000 tons, is still exclusively produced from petrol. In this context, the development of alternative synthetic pathways for methionine production has become very challenging and of utmost interest. We herein develop a new strategy that combines the capacity of microorganisms to produce highly functionalized carbohydrates with high reaction rates of chemical syntheses by the ex nihilo design and implementation of a synthetic pathway to generate a synthon as precursors of many highly relevant biotechnological products in a host microorganism from renewable carbon sources. This chemical building block (synthon) will then be a platform for the (bio)synthesis of other biotechnological relevant molecules. Scientifically speaking, the presented project derives its innovative character from the fact that the ex nihilo implementation of a metabolic pathway represents an unprecedented scientific challenge in the context of bulk chemical production. The commercial output of this project is witnessed by the direct and strong involvement of the industrial partner in order to expand its position in food and animalnutrition and find biotechnological alternatives to its currently chemical activities. This ongoing ambitious and challenging project gathers complementary experts and skills from different domains, namely enzyme engineering, functional genomics, metabolic engineering, chemical biology, and bioinformatics/biomathematic, creating an interdisciplinary core of expertises which is managed within the new TWB (Toulouse White Biotechnology) R & D Centre of Excellence in Toulouse. MODELLING COMPLEX BIOLOGICAL SYSTEMS 13