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Metabolic engineering

Synthetic metabolism without the TCA cycle

The core metabolic pathways are tightly intertwined, creating challenges for metabolic engineering. Yu et al. present a synthetic decarboxylation cycle that substitutes the TCA cycle in energy metabolism, gaining high yields in the production of reduced compounds such as fatty acids.

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Fig. 1: Metabolic engineering to increase fatty production.

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Acknowledgements

S.N.L. and M.R. are supported by Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin.

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Correspondence to Markus Ralser.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Lindner, S.N., Ralser, M. Synthetic metabolism without the TCA cycle. Nat Metab 4, 1438–1439 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s42255-022-00668-9

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