Toward predicting metabolic fluxes in metabolically engineered strains

Predicting metabolic fluxes of a genetically engineered organism is an important step toward rational pathway design. However, because of various regulatory mechanisms, which are complex, often ill-characterized, and sometimes undiscovered, predicting metabolic fluxes using kinetic simulation is difficult. We propose to incorporate regulatory constraints in flux calculation to allow prediction of the steady-state fluxes without complete kinetics. The regulatory constraint, in its linear form, is derived from the dynamic metabolic control theory and involves the flux control coefficients. It is shown that with these constraints, the responses to metabolic perturbation can be predicted. Conversely, the regulatory constraints and the control coefficients can be determined by comparing the experimental data with the prediction. Therefore, this approach may offer a practical direction toward prediction of fluxes for metabolically engineered organisms.