Identification of flux regulation coefficients from elementary flux modes: A systems biology tool for analysis of metabolic networks

Abstract

Within a metabolic network, the elementary flux modes enables a unique description of different operations of the network. Thus, the metabolic fluxes can be specified as convex combinations of the elementary flux modes. Here, we describe an approach to identify the set of elementary flux modes that operates in a given metabolic network through the use of measurements of macroscopic fluxes, that is, fluxes in and out of the cell. Besides enabling estimation of the metabolic fluxes, the parameters of the linear combinations of the elementary flux modes provide valuable physiological information; we call these parameters flux regulation coefficients (FRCs). These coefficients indicate which enzyme subsets are important at different growth conditions. We demonstrate how FRCs can be used to map the operation of the metabolic network of the yeast Saccharomyces sp. under different growth conditions.