An analytic and systematic framework for estimating metabolic flux ratios from 13C tracer experiments

Background: Metabolic fluxes provide invaluable insight on the integrated response of a cell to environmental stimuli or genetic modifications. Current computational methods for estimating the metabolic fluxes from 13C isotopomer measurement data rely either on manual derivation of analytic equations constraining the fluxes or on the numerical solution of a highly nonlinear system of isotopomer balance equations. In the first approach, analytic equations have to be tediously derived for each organism, substrate or labelling pattern, while in the second approach, the global nature of an optimum solution is difficult to prove and comprehensive measurements of external fluxes to augment the 13C isotopomer data are typically needed. Results: We present a novel analytic framework for estimating metabolic flux ratios in the cell from 13C isotopomer measurement data. In the presented framework, equation systems constraining the fluxes are derived automatically from the model of the metabolis...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2008
• Where: BMCBI
• Authors: Ari Rantanen, Juho Rousu, Paula Jouhten, Nicola Zamboni, Hannu Maaheimo, Esko Ukkonen
• Keywords: BMCBI 2008, Flux Ratios, Measurements, Metabolic