Graph-theoretical identification of pathways for biochemical reactions

A rigorous method for identifying biochemical reaction or metabolic pathway s through its systematic synthesis has been established. The current method for synthesizing networks of metabolic pathways follows the general framew ork of a highly exacting combinatorial method. The method is capable of gen erating not only all combinatorially independent, feasible reaction network s only once, but also those combinations of independent pathways. A case st udy involving the conversion of glucose to pyruvate with 14 elementary reac tions illustrates the efficiency and efficacy of the method. All the result s have been obtained with a PC (Pentium-III 550 MHz, 256 MB RAM) within 1 s .