A general definition of metabolic pathways useful for systematic organization and analysis of complex metabolic networks

A set of linear pathways often does not capture the full range of behaviors of a metabolic network. The concept of ‘elementary flux modes’ provides a mathematical tool to define and comprehensively describe all metabolic routes that are both stoichiometrically and thermodynamically feasible for a gr...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nature biotechnology 2000-03, Vol.18 (3), p.326-332
Main Authors: Schuster, Stefan, Fell, David A, Dandekar, Thomas
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Agriculture
Algorithms
Amino acids
Analytical, structural and metabolic biochemistry
Biochemistry
Bioinformatics
Biological and medical sciences
Biomedical and Life Sciences
Biomedical Engineering/Biotechnology
Biomedicine
Biotechnology
By products
Computational Biology
Enzymes
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
General and theoretical biochemistry
Glycolysis
Life Sciences
Metabolism
Metabolism - physiology
Metabolites
Models, Biological
Monosaccharides - metabolism
Pentose Phosphate Pathway
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:A set of linear pathways often does not capture the full range of behaviors of a metabolic network. The concept of ‘elementary flux modes’ provides a mathematical tool to define and comprehensively describe all metabolic routes that are both stoichiometrically and thermodynamically feasible for a group of enzymes. We have used this concept to analyze the interplay between the pentose phosphate pathway (PPP) and glycolysis. The set of elementary modes for this system involves conventional glycolysis, a futile cycle, all the modes of PPP function described in biochemistry textbooks, and additional modes that are a priori equally entitled to pathway status. Applications include maximizing product yield in amino acid and antibiotic synthesis, reconstruction and consistency checks of metabolism from genome data, analysis of enzyme deficiencies, and drug target identification in metabolic networks.
ISSN:1087-0156
1546-1696
DOI:10.1038/73786