Flux balance analysis
Overview
Metabolism
Metabolism is the set of chemical reactions that happen in the cells of living organisms to sustain life. These processes allow organisms to grow and reproduce, maintain their structures, and respond to their environments. Metabolism is usually divided into two categories...
. It does not require knowledge of metabolite concentration or details of the enzyme kinetics
Enzyme kinetics
Enzyme kinetics is the study of the chemical reactions that are catalysed by enzymes. In enzyme kinetics, the reaction rate is measured and the effects of varying the conditions of the reaction investigated...
of the system. The assumption is made that the system being studied is homeostatic
Homeostasis
Homeostasis is the property of a system that regulates its internal environment and tends to maintain a stable, constant condition of properties like temperature or pH...
and the technique then aims to answer the question: given some known available nutrients, which set of metabolic fluxes maximises the growth rate of an organism while preserving the internal concentration of metabolites?
A notable example of the success of FBA is the ability to accurately predict the growth rate of the prokaryote
Prokaryote
The prokaryotes are a group of organisms that lack a cell nucleus , or any other membrane-bound organelles. The organisms that have a cell nucleus are called eukaryotes. Most prokaryotes are unicellular, but a few such as myxobacteria have multicellular stages in their life cycles...
E.
Unanswered Questions
