Detection of elementary flux modes in biochemical networks: a promising tool for pathway analysis and metabolic engineering

Rational metabolic engineering requires powerful theoretical methods such a s pathway analysis, in which the topology of metabolic networks is consider ed. 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 combin ed tricarboxylic-acjd-cycle-glyoxylate-shunt system and tryptophan synthesi s are used here for illustration. This approach can be used for many biotec hnological applications such as increasing the yield of a product, channell ing a product into desired pathways and in functional reconstruction from g enomic data.