The knowledge of metabolism and its regulation gained by the studies described above is applied for the development of new or optimized C. glutamicum production strains by metabolic engineering. Three examples are outlined below.
Metabolic engineering is the theory and practice of optimizing or analyzing metabolic networks. Our group generated a lot of C. glutamicum strains enable to produce useful materials by metabolic engineering.

Improvement of metabolic pathways

Disruption and introduction of one or more genes are the basic strategy for constructing a high performance producer cell. Control of gene expressions and modification of enzymes also contribute to high efficiency and high productivity. At a practical level of production, ability of simultaneous utilization of mixed sugars and tolerance against product toxicity are important.

Metabolic control analysis

Transcriptome expression profiles may be changed by gene-recombination or various conditions including temperature, pH and intra/extra-cellular circumstances. Our group prepared DNA microarray chips for probing 99.9% of the total gene based on the genomic information of C. glutamicum to detect the change of the transcriptome expression profiles. Results of the transcriptome analysis are available for improvement of metabolic pathways to construct the desired producer cells.

Metabolic pathways are extremely complicated, and concentrations of each metabolite may quickly alter in response to various intra/extra-cellular factors. Understandings of the complicated metabolic fluxes are enables us to design a effective strategies for improving productivities. Our group performs metabolome analysis to grasp the metabolic fluxes. Results of the metabolome analysis are also available to construct the desired producer cells.