PART I - INDUSTRIAL BIOTECHNOLOGY: FROM PIONEERS TO VISIONARY 1. History of Industrial Biotechnology 2. Synthetic Biology: An Emerging Approach for Strain Engineering 3. Towards Efficient Genome-Scale Metabolic Pathway Analysis 4. Cell-Free Synthetic Systems for Metabolic Engineering and Biosynthetic Pathway PrototypingPART II - MULTI-PURPOSE BACTERIAL CELL FACTORIES 5. Industrial Biotechnology: Escherichia coli as a Host 6. Industrial Microorganisms: Corynebacterium glutamicum 7. Host Organisms: Bacillus subtilis 8. Host Organisms: P. putida PART III - EXPLOITING ANAEROBIC BIOSYNTHETIC POWER 9. Host Organisms: Clostridium acetobutylicum/ Clostridium beijerinckii and Related Organisms 10. Advances in Consolidated Bioprocessing Using Clostridium thermocellum and Thermoanaerobacter saccharolyticum 11. Lactic Acid Bacteria PART IV - MICROBIAL TREASURE CHESTS FOR HIGH-VALUE NATURAL COMPOUNDS 12. Host Organisms: Myxobacterium 13. Host Organisms: Streptomyces PART V - EXTENDING THE RAW MATERIAL BASIS FOR BIO-PRODUCTION 14. Extreme Thermophiles as Metabolic Engineering Platforms: Strategies and Current Perspective 15. Cyanobacteria as a Host Organism 16. Host Organisms: Algae PART VI - EUKARYOTIC WORKHORSES: COMPLEX CELLS ENABLE COMPLEX PRODUCTS 17. Host Organisms: Mammalian Cells 18. Host Organisms: Saccharomyces cerevisiae 19. Industrial Microorganisms: Pichia pastoris