Mini Review
Volume 18 Issue 3 - February 2019
DOI: 10.19080/CTBEB.2019.18.555988
Curr Trends Biomedical Eng & Biosci
Copyright © All rights are reserved by Gheorghe Maria
Model-Based Re-Design of some Genetic Regulato-
ry Circuits to get Genetic Modified Micro-organisms
(GMO) by using Engineering Computational Tools
Gheorghe Maria
1
*, Cristiana Luminita Gijiu
1
, Mara Crisan
1
, Cristina Maria
2
and Carmen Tociu
2
1
Department of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering, University Politehnica of Bucharest, Romania
2
National Institute for Research and Development in Environmental Protection, Romania
Submission: January 22, 2019; Published: February 20, 2019
*Corresponding author: Gheorghe Maria, Department of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering, University Politehnica of Bucharest, Polizu Str.
1-7, 011061, Bucharest, Romania
Curr Trends Biomedical Eng & Biosci 18(3): CTBEB.MS.ID.555988 (2019) 0061
Short Considerations
The work is a systematized and reasonable short review
of the main published contributions of Dr. Maria in the field of
metabolic processes simulation related to the central carbon
metabolism (CCM) and modelling the dynamics of the gene
expression regulation (GERM) and of the genetic regulation
circuits (GRC) in living cells. Application of biochemical
engineering, and of nonlinear system control principles and
concepts to the modeling of complex cellular processes on
deterministic bases are briefly presented with including a rich
list of references. These models are essential for understanding
and simulating the CCM, useful to in-silico (that is model-based)
re-design of genetically modified micro-organisms (GMOs) with
applications in industrial biosynthesis, medicine, environmental
engineering, vaccine production, biosensors, etc.
A special attention is paid to authors’ contributions related
to dynamics simulation of the gene expression regulatory
modules (GERM) and of genetic regulation circuits (GRC)
in living cells, by promoting novel concepts of a novel cell
modelling framework, that is the so-called “variable-volume-
whole-cell” (VVWC) models. The relatively novel concept of”
whole-cell” simulation of cell metabolic processes has been
reviewed to prove its advantages when building-up dynamic
models of modular structures that can reproduce complex
metabolic syntheses inside living cells. The advantages of the
more realistic VVWC approach are briefly underlined and
exemplified when developing kinetic representations of the
gene expression regulatory modules (GERM) that control the
protein synthesis and homeostasis of metabolic processes. After
a brief presentation of the general concepts and particularities
of the VVWC modelling, both past and current experience with
constructing effective GERM models is reviewed, together with
some rules used when linking GERM-s to build-up models for
optimized globally efficient genetic regulatory circuits (GRC),
by using quantified regulatory indices evaluated vs. simulated
dynamic and stationary environmental perturbations.
The topics belongs to the emergent field of Systems Biology,
defined as “the science of discovering, modelling, understanding
and ultimately engineering at the molecular level the dynamic
relationships between the biological molecules that define
living organisms” (Leroy Hood, Inst. Systems Biology, Seattle).
Systems Biology is one of the modern tools, which uses advanced
mathematical simulation models for in-silico re-design of GMOs
that possess specific and desired functions and characteristics.
The present work makes a short review of the (bio)chemical
engineering principles and deterministic modelling rules
used by the Systems Biology for modelling cellular metabolic
Abstract
The paper is aiming at reviewing the main math modelling and computational tools developed by Maria (2017,2018) [1-3] to in-silico re-
design genetic regulation circuits (GRC) in living cells to get GMOs of desired characteristics. A number of suggestive examples (case studies) are
mentioned as well.
Keywords: Systems biology; Cell metabolism; Deterministic modelling; Gene expression modelling; Genetic regulatory circuits (GRC); Pareto
design of E.coli to get maximum succinate; Design cloned E.coli to get maximum mercury uptake; Design E.coli with a genetic switch biosensor;
Design E.coli with a desired glycolytic oscillator; Tryptophan synthesis; Glycolytic oscillator
Abbrevations: GERM: Gene Expression Regulatory Module; CCM: Central Carbon Metabolism; GRC: Genetic Regulation Circuits; GMOs:
Genetically Modified Micro-Organisms; VVWC: Variable-Volume-Whole-Cell; SUCC: Succinate; MINLP: Mixed-Integer Nonlinear Programming