There have been recent advances in metabolic flux analysis. In particular,
the marriage of traditional flux balancing with NMR isotopomer distribution
analysis holds great promise for the detailed quantification of physiology
. Nevertheless, flux analysis yields only static snap-shots of metabolism.
To robustly predict the time evolution of metabolic networks, dynamic mathe
matical models, especially those that contain a description of both gene ex
pression as well as enzyme activity, must be utilized. When mechanistic con
trol and regulatory information is not available, heuristic-based methods,
such as the cybernetic framework, can be employed to describe the action of
these control mechanisms. In the 'high-information' future, as more biolog
ical information becomes available, such heuristic-based approaches can be
replaced by mechanistic mass-action representations of physiology that stem
directly from genetic sequence.