Mathematical models of cell factories: moving towards the core of industrial biotechnology

Industrial biotechnology involves the utilization of cell factories for the production of fuels and chemi-cals. Traditionally, the development of highly pro-ductive microbial strains has relied on random mutagenesis and screening. The development of pre-dictive mathematical models provides a new para-digm for the rational design of cell factories. Instead of selecting among a set of strains resulting from random mutagenesis, mathematical models allow the researchers to predict in silico the outcomes of dif-ferent genetic manipulations and engineer new strains by performing gene deletions or additions leading to a higher productivity of the desired chemi-cals. In this review we aim to summarize the main modelling approaches of biological processes and illustrate the particular applications that they have found in the field of industrial microbiology