Chapter 2 - Application of Genomic and Proteomic Data for Bioprocess Analysis and Optimization

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the applications of genomic and proteomic analyses for bioprocess characterization and optimization. It addresses the use of genomic data for the construction and analysis of potential metabolic pathways. General application of proteomics to bioprocess analysis are discussed in the chapter. This is followed by a demonstration of the practical use of genomic and proteomic approaches for the analysis and optimization of a real fermentation process. It shows that genomic data, even unfinished, raw genome sequences with relatively low genome coverage, can be converted into useful information about protein coding sequences and their potential assigned functions. This enables one to construct a strain specific metabolic network, which by itself is already an important result for functional genomic studies, such as proteomic analysis. By using genomic data and results from other functional genomic studies, such as gene expression profiling with microarrays, the gene regulatory network of a given microorganism can be inferred by using bioinformatics tools. The functional networks, particularly the metabolic network, cannot yet be constructed in silico but instead require information from the various “omics” technologies.