Abstract

Cells adapt their metabolic state in response to changes in the environment. I will present a systematic framework for the construction of flux graphs to represent organism-wide metabolic networks. These graphs encode the directionality of metabolic fluxes via links that represent the flow of metabolites from source to target reactions. The weights of the links have a precise interpretation in terms of probabilities or metabolite flow per unit time. The methodology can be applied both in the absence of a specific biological context, or tailored to different environmental conditions by incorporating flux distributions computed from constraint-based modelling (e.g., Flux-Balance Analysis). I will illustrate the approach on the central carbon metabolism of Escherichia coli, revealing drastic changes in the topological and community structure of the metabolic graphs, which capture the re-routing of metabolic fluxes under each growth condition.

By integrating Flux Balance Analysis and tools from network science, our framework allows for the interrogation of environment-specific metabolic responses beyond fixed, standard pathway descriptions.