The 2019 Metabolic Engineering Summit (MES 2019) initiated by the International Metabolic Engineering Society (IMES) was successfully held by the Tianjin Institute of Industrial Biotechnology (TIB), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) from October 20 to 22. Over 500 metabolic engineering expert and scholars and enterprise representatives from more than 20 countries including the United States, Germany, Britain, Japan, South Korea, Singapore and Pakistan attended the summit.

Prof. Ma Yanhe, the Director-General of Tianjin Institute of Industrial Biology, delivered a welcoming speech at the opening ceremony on October 20. He introduced the achievements made by TIB in metabolic engineering and synthetic biology as well as its vision for development, and extended a warm invitation to co-build the National Technology Innovation Center for Synthetic Biology. Prof. Jens Nielsen, one of the founders of metabolic engineering, the founding chairman of the IMES said in his speech that China is playing an increasingly important role in the field of metabolic engineering and that the IMES had been founded to cement the in-depth exchange and cooperation between China and other countries in the field of metabolic engineering and to promote technological progress and industrial development in global metabolic engineering through international conferences on metabolic engineering. Subsequently, He summarized the latest progress made by yeast cell factories in the production of energy sources and chemicals through metabolic engineering transformation in his keynote report Yeast Metabolic Engineering. Dr. Xueli Zhang chairman of the conference and a Professor of TIB presided over the opening ceremony.

The conference has seven major sessions, including "production of bio-based chemicals through metabolic engineering", "production of natural products through metabolic engineering", "turning ‘waste’ into ‘wealth’ through metabolic engineering", “metabolic engineering and synthetic biology", "metabolic engineering and directed evolution", "metabolic engineering as an enabling technology to drive innovation" and "promotion of the bio-economy through metabolic engineering”. In the next two days, 26 top scholars in metabolic engineering around the world such as Prof. Sang Yup Lee of Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Prof. Jay D. Keasling of the University of California Berkeley, Prof. Christopher Voigt of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology demonstrated the latest achievements made in metabolic engineering in the past two years and highlighted future research areas in their presentations. The attendees, especially the enterprise representatives showed considerable interest in the wide application of metabolic engineering achievements in the production of chemicals, materials, and medicines and their role in promoting the development of the bio-economy. During the Panel discussion session, all the speakers were invited back to the stage brainstorm with the participants. The zero-distance face-to-face dialogs gave birth to a series of new ideas, innovations and new methods, which injected vitality into the future sustainable development of metabolic engineering.

As one of the highlights of this conference, the winner of the first " Zhao Xueming  Lectureship Award in Metabolic Engineering " was announced. Prof. Guoqiang Chen from Tsinghua University became the first scholar to win the award. To encourage the innovative work of young scientific and technological personnel in the field of metabolic engineering, the conference also set up an achievement display platform for young scholars. 10 from the 136 posters were selected to give poster presentations. 　

The Metabolic Engineering Summit is a conference with important international influence in the field of metabolic engineering founded in China by the International Metabolic Engineering Society. The first and second metabolic engineering summits were held in Beijing in 2015 and 2017 respectively, with the aim of sharing the latest progress in the field of global metabolic engineering in the past two years and predicting the future research trends and development directions. The successful convening of this session has provided an important platform for the exchange on and cooperation in metabolic engineering and synthetic biology. It is of great significance for promoting theoretical innovation, technological breakthroughs and industrial development in the field of metabolic engineering between China and the rest world.