There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.
Abstract
Rational metabolic engineering requires powerful theoretical methods such as pathway
analysis, in which the topology of metabolic networks is considered. All metabolic
capabilities in steady states are composed of elementary flux modes, which are minimal
sets of enzymes that can each generate valid steady states. The modes of the fructose-2,6-bisphosphate
cycle, the combined tricarboxylic-acid-glyoxylate-shunt system and tryptophan synthesis
are used here for illustration. This approach can be used for many biotechnological
applications such as increasing the yield of a product, channelling a product into
desired pathways and in functional reconstruction from genomic data.