Structural analysis of metabolic networks based on flux centrality

Dirk Koschützki (1) , B.H. Björn H. Junker (2) , J. Jörg Schwender (3) , Falk Schreiber (2, 4)

1 Department of Computer and Electrical Engineering
2 IPK-Gatersleben - Leibniz Institute of Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research [Gatersleben]
3 Biology Department
4 MLU - Martin-Luther-Universität Halle Wittenberg

Metabolic reactions are fundamental to living organisms, and a large number of reactions simultaneously occur at a given time in living cells transforming diverse metabolites into each other. There has been an ongoing debate on how to classify metabolites with respect to their importance for metabolic performance, usually based on the analysis of topological properties of genome scale metabolic networks. However, none of these studies have accounted quantitatively for flux in metabolic networks, thus lacking an important component of a cell's biochemistry.

Mots clés: Network centralities; Metabolism; Network analysis; Flux balance analysis

Dirk Koschützki, B.H. Björn H. Junker, J. Jörg Schwender, Falk Schreiber. Structural analysis of metabolic networks based on flux centrality. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 2010, 265 (3), pp.261. ⟨10.1016/j.jtbi.2010.05.009⟩. ⟨hal-00608412⟩