4.2 Metabolic pathway models
An important objective in bioprocess design is achieving highly
efficient conversion of inputted nutrients into biomass, a metric known
as the yield coefficient [10]. In cultivated meat production this is
particularly important as the cost of cell culture media is currently
very high and because of the enormous scaling requirements to support
conventional meat demand. Computer models of metabolic pathways should
prove to be advantageous in this process optimization challenge,
facilitated, in part, by the depth of intercellular information that can
be obtained with “omics” approaches. Indeed, constraint-based modeling
techniques have proved very useful in understanding and optimizing CHO
cell growth in a bioreactor environment [11] and metabolic network
models have been used with bone marrow-derived stem cells [12].