Microbial production of metabolites for food and processes

Metabolism is the key of all microbial life. It promotes and affects the totality of the cellular activities with constitutive and catabolic elements and the production of energy. Despite microorganisms occupying different environmental niches and showing huge variation in lifestyles, fundamental microbial metabolic tasks are extremely analogous throughout diverse species, for the anabolic and catabolic processes Fig. 5.1. As a result, although different, all microorganisms have the need to obtain nutritive elements. Thus they manage their central metabolism, the synthesis of monomer, as well as the polymerization of macromolecules giving rise to the biomass synthesis and proliferation. In addition, information about the metabolic state of microorganisms has to be transmitted to other cellular processes, so as to coordinate the accessibility of nutrients and energy with cellular functions. Given the great and tightly joined network of metabolites, enzymatic reactions, and regulatory interactions, it is difficult to completely understand the interwoven microbial metabolic and regulatory network. Nevertheless, we could draw the main steps that define the entire microbial metabolic pathway, responsible for the formation of the biomolecules necessary for the microbial life to exist (Fig. 5.2)