Including metabolite concentrations into flux balance analysis: thermodynamic realizability as a constraint on flux distributions in metabolic networks.

ABSTRACT:

Background

In recent years, constrained optimization - usually referred to as flux balance analysis (FBA) - has become a widely applied method for the computation of stationary fluxes in large-scale metabolic networks. The striking advantage of FBA as compared to kinetic modeling is that it basically requires only knowledge of the stoichiometry of the network. On the other hand, results of FBA are to a large degree hypothetical because the method relies on plausible but hardly provable optimality principles that are thought to govern metabolic flux distributions.

Results

To augment the reliability of FBA-based flux calculations we propose an additional side constraint which assures thermodynamic realizability, i.e. that the flux directions are consistent with the correspondi

SUBMITTER: Hoppe A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC1903363 | biostudies-literature | 2007 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature