Chapter 2 - Synthetic regulatory elements for fine-tuning gene expression

Abstract

Metabolic engineering and synthetic biology have been used to rewire metabolism or endow cells to improve metabolites production or produce new products. However, introducing heterologous pathways into the microbial cell factories for the production of bio-based chemicals often leads to metabolic imbalances, resulting in growth retardation, and physiological stress. Therefore, fine-tuning gene expression is important for optimizing synthetic gene networks and metabolic pathways. There are some regulatory elements used for fine-tuning gene expression during synthetic biology, such as promoters and Ribosome binding sites (RBSs). In this chapter, we will discuss the recent development of regulatory elements and the toolbox of gene expression regulatory elements for fine-tuning metabolic pathway, such as synthetic promoters, RBSs, N-terminal coding sequence, proteolysis tags, and terminators.