Estimating the size of the solution space of metabolic networks

Background: Cellular metabolism is one of the most investigated system of biological interactions. While the topological nature of individual reactions and pathways in the network is quite well understood there is still a lack of comprehension regarding the global functional behavior of the system. In the last few years flux-balance analysis (FBA) has been the most successful and widely used technique for studying metabolism at system level. This method strongly relies on the hypothesis that the organism maximizes an objective function. However only under very specific biological conditions (e.g. maximization of biomass for E. coli in reach nutrient medium) the cell seems to obey such optimization law. A more refined analysis not assuming extremization remains an elusive task for large metabolic systems due to algorithmic limitations. Results: In this work we propose a novel algorithmic strategy that provides an efficient characterization of the whole set of stable fluxes compatible w...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2008
• Where: BMCBI
• Authors: Alfredo Braunstein, Roberto Mulet, Andrea Pagnani
• Keywords: BMCBI 2008, Large Metabolic Systems, Metabolic, Metabolic Networks