Antonio Villaverde (Editor-in-Chief)

"The Microbial Cell Factory concept is more alive than ever. Apart from the production-transformation of conventional metabolites, proteins, fuels, drugs and food, microbial cells are shown to be excellent producers of biomaterials with important applications in emerging biomedical fields. The contribution of systems biology principles, metabolic and protein engineering and 'omic' technologies should permit the full exploitation of microbial cells, which is progressively achieved from such a combination of interdisciplinary approaches."

Ursula Rinas (Associate Editor)

"It is nowadays particularly inspiring to utilize the wealth of experimental and theoretical 'omic' technologies to get a deeper understanding of the functioning of microbial production strains not just for the identification of (novel) optimization targets to develop better strains and processes but also for the pure knowledge gain to understand complex regulatory networks."

Sang Yup Lee (Associate Editor)

"Microorganisms have long been utilized for the production of many useful compounds for us. Recently, they are playing increasingly important roles as platform factories for the production of even more diverse products ranging from drugs to industrial chemicals. To make these microbial processes efficient and cost competitive, many interdisciplinary approaches are taken to improve the cellular and metabolic performance. Microbial Cell Factories is the journal that focuses on these aspects. It is expected that this journal will serve as an essential information source reporting the state-of-the-art developments for scientists and engineers, and academic and industrial colleagues alike."