  The capacity to predict and control bioprocesses is perhaps one of the most
important objectives of biotechnology. Computational simulation is an
established methodology for the design and optimization of bioprocesses, where
the finite elements method (FEM) is at the state-of-art engineering
multi-physics simulation system, with tools such as Finite Element Analysis
(FEA) and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). Although FEA and CFD are
currently applied to bioreactor design, most simulations are restricted to the
multi-physics capabilities of the existing sofware packages. This manuscript is
a contribution for the consolidation of FEM in computational biotechnology, by
presenting a comprehensive review of finite element procedures of the most
common enzymatic mechanisms found in biotechnological processes, such as,
enzyme activation, Michaelis Menten, competitive inhibition, non-competitive
inhibition, anti-competitive inhibition, competition by substrate, sequential
random mechanism, ping-pong bi-bi and Theorel-Chance. Most importantly, the
manuscript opens the possibility for the use of FEM in conjunction with
{\guillemotleft}in-silico{\guillemotright} models of metabolic networks, as
well as, chemical networks in order to simulate complex bioprocesses in
biotechnology, putting emphasis into flux balance analysis, pheno-metabolomics
space exploration in time and space, overcoming the limitations of assuming
chemostat conditions in systems biology computations.
