Synthetic biology devices as tools for metabolic engineering

Metabolic engineering focuses on controlling cellular metabolism and heterologous pathway flux to maximize the production of a product of interest. In recent years, various devices have begun to emerge from synthetic biology which could find widespread application in the field of metabolic engineering. In this review, we describe devices from synthetic biology and discuss the difficulties that may be encountered when using these devices as tools for metabolic engineering. (c) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.