Biosynthesis Assembly Line Simulator

Biosynthesis Pathway

Pathway type

Enzyme modules 6

Fermentation rate 1.0×

Chain length

–

Molecules made

–

Yield rate

–

How it works

Many natural products (antibiotics, terpenoids, alkaloids) are built by modular assembly-line enzymes — polyketide synthases (PKS) and non-ribosomal peptide synthetases (NRPS). A carrier domain shuttles the growing chain from module to module; each module extends the chain by one building block and sometimes modifies it (reduction, methylation). Change a module and you change the final structure — this is the basis of combinatorial biosynthesis and metabolic engineering.

cycle_time = base / rate
total_time = modules × cycle_time + release_time
yield ≈ 60 / total_time   [molecules / min]

Pathway type — polyketide, terpenoid or alkaloid chemistry: same modular logic, different building blocks and enzyme colors.
Enzyme modules — how many stations the carrier passes through; more modules build a longer, more complex product per cycle but take longer to finish.
Fermentation rate — how fast each module completes its step, analogous to optimizing culture conditions (nutrients, pH, temperature, aeration) in a real bioreactor.
Yield rate — molecules completed per minute, the throughput a fermentation engineer actually cares about.

Real-world relevance: this is literally how erythromycin, taxol precursors and many antibiotics are produced at industrial scale — strain engineers swap or tune modules to raise yield or make novel analogs.

Carrier / substrate Growing chain unit Enzyme module

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