Year: 2003-04

Company: Genomatica

Liaison(s): Christophe Schilling

Traditional methods used by the bioprocessing industry to optimize production of therapeutic agents by genetically modified microorganisms or cultured cells are time consuming and costly. A KGI team is working with Genomatica to adapt the company’s computational modeling software to simulate metabolism in the yeast expression system, Pichia pastoris. Simulating the metabolism of these cells will allow the team to predict the outcomes of optimization experiments quickly and will lead to more efficient production of therapeutics. The team is creating a genome scale metabolic model of Pichia pastoris that includes all known metabolic reactions and is validating their model against existing experimental data. They are also investigating the potential market for such a model among bioscience companies licensed to use Pichia as a protein expression system.