Finding MEMo: Minimum sets of elementary flux modes

Abstract

Metabolic network reconstructions are widely used in computational systems biology for in silico studies of cellular metabolism. A common approach to analyse these models are elementary flux modes (EFMs), which correspond to minimal functional units in the network. Already for medium-sized networks, it is often impossible to compute the set of all EFMs, due to their huge number. From a practical point of view, this might also not be necessary because a subset of EFMs may already be sufficient to answer relevant biological questions. In this article, we study MEMos or minimum sets of EFMs that can generate all possible steady-state behaviours of a metabolic network. The number of EFMs in a MEMo may be by several orders of magnitude smaller than the total number of EFMs. Using MEMos, we can compute generating sets of EFMs in metabolic networks where the whole set of EFMs is too large to be enumerated.