Here, we finish up our look at a paper about optimizing metabolic pathways. Continue reading How Do I Increase Bioreactor Efficiency?, Part 3

In our last post on this paper, we introduced the topic and went over the logic of their approach. Today we will be looking at what goes on in lab to begin tackling this challenge. Continue reading How Do I Increase Bioreactor Efficiency?, Part 2

This paper deals with cells as bioreactors. What exactly is a bioreactor? Industries produce chemicals to make everyday materials, from the polyester in the incredibly soft blanket I’m warming up with at the moment, to the bisphenol-A (BPA) used to harden and protect plastic surfaces. The current materials industry is based off of petrochemistry – we use synthetic chemistry methods to get these molecules from oil-based sources. This can be done in a tank, a chemical reactor. In a bioreactor, the tank is full of living culture, where microbes are performing the chemical reaction for us. The cells themselves can each be considered a bioreactors, and the tank itself is an industrial-sized one. Continue reading How Do I Increase Bioreactor Efficiency?