Figure 7.

Cell engineering to regulate the generation of biopolymers. a) Metabolic engineering involves adding (a-1) or removing (a-2) biochemical pathways to optimize the production of the desired biopolymers. b) Genetic engineering involves plasmid engineering (b-1) and transformation (b-2), resulting in the expression of desired genes in microbial cells (b-3). Genetic engineering allows the constitutive and inducible gene expression of biopolymer production by microbial cells. RBS, ribosome binding site; ori, origin of replication.