Editing Metabolic pathway (section)

== Genetic engineering of metabolic pathways ==
Many metabolic pathways are of commercial interest. For instance, the production of many [[antibiotic]]s or other drugs requires complex pathways. The pathways to produce such compounds can be transplanted into microbes or other more suitable organism for production purposes. For example, the world's supply of the anti-cancer drug [[vinblastine]] is produced by relatively ineffient extraction and purification of the precursors [[vindoline]] and [[catharanthine]] from the plant ''[[Catharanthus roseus]]'', which are then chemically converted into vinblastine. The biosynthetic pathway to produce vinblastine, including 30 enzymatic steps, has been transferred into yeast cells which is a convenient system to grow in large amounts. With these genetic modifications yeast can use its own metabolites [[geranyl pyrophosphate]] and [[tryptophan]] to produce the precursors of catharanthine and vindoline. This process required 56 genetic edits, including expression of 34 heterologous genes from plants in yeast cells.<ref>{{cite journal | vauthors = Zhang J, Hansen LG, Gudich O, Viehrig K, Lassen LM, Schrübbers L, Adhikari KB, Rubaszka P, Carrasquer-Alvarez E, Chen L, D'Ambrosio V, Lehka B, Haidar AK, Nallapareddy S, Giannakou K, Laloux M, Arsovska D, Jørgensen MA, Chan LJ, Kristensen M, Christensen HB, Sudarsan S, Stander EA, Baidoo E, Petzold CJ, Wulff T, O'Connor SE, Courdavault V, Jensen MK, Keasling JD | display-authors = 6 | title = A microbial supply chain for production of the anti-cancer drug vinblastine | journal = Nature | volume = 609 | issue = 7926 | pages = 341–347 | date = September 2022 | pmid = 36045295 | pmc = 9452304 | doi = 10.1038/s41586-022-05157-3 | bibcode = 2022Natur.609..341Z }}</ref>