Systems-integration of plant metabolism: means, motive and opportunity

System integration of metabolism is considered in analogy to the investigation of corporate misdemeanour. Motive, or goal-oriented explanation, provides hypotheses that can guide the investigation of network structure. Opportunity can be established by correlative analysis using large-scale omics resources. However, correlative approaches on their own remain inconclusive and seldom identify all the links in a network. Establishment of means, or the ability to act on other network components and contribute to a phenotype, is therefore crucial. This requires functional information. Integration of quantitative data in the context of pathway models provides a powerful approach to establish 'means'. This is illustrated by discussing: first, how protein abundance is regulated by a network including transcript abundance, translation and protein degradation and second, how a combination of experimentation and modelling provides information about pathway flux, an emergent network property that integrates changes in proteins and metabolites and determines composition and biomass.