Systems biology for industrial strains and fermentation processes—Example: Amino acids

Systems biology is attracting significant interest finding applications not only in pharmaceutical development but also for basic studies on microbial systems. The latter often concentrate on the quantitative understanding of global regulation phenomena. So far, these activities are dominated by academic groups basically mirroring the necessity to prepare the sound scientific understanding first, before industrial applications can be derived later. However, this short-term view may not be sufficient because systems biology already offers numerous benefits for industrial applications, provided that special constraints are considered. This contribution indicates some of the constraints worth noticing when industrial systems biology projects are carried out. Consequently, differences in project structure and goals between purely academic and industrial systems biology projects are outlined.