Robustness of metabolic networks

We investigated the robustness of cellular metabolism by simulating the system-level computational models, and also performed the corresponding experiments to validate our predictions. We address the cellular robustness from the ``metabolite''-framework by using the novel concept of ``flux-sum,'' which is the sum of all incoming or outgoing fluxes (they are the same under the pseudo-steady state assumption). By estimating the changes of the flux-sum under various genetic and environmental perturbations, we were able to clearly decipher the metabolic robustness; the flux-sum around an essential metabolite does not change much under various perturbations. We also identified the list of the metabolites essential to cell survival, and then ``acclimator'' metabolites that can control the cell growth were discovered. Furthermore, this concept of ``metabolite essentiality'' should be useful in developing new metabolic engineering strategies for improved production of various bioproducts and designing new drugs that can fight against multi-antibiotic resistant superbacteria by knocking-down the enzyme activities around an essential metabolite. Finally, we combined a regulatory network with the metabolic network to investigate its effect on dynamic properties of cellular metabolism.