Performance Indices in Metabolic Systems: a Criterion for Evaluating Effectiveness in Metabolic Regulation

Abstract

A metabolic pathway is a dynamic system consisting of a set of level variables (concentrations of internal metabolites) with associated input and output fluxes (enzymic rates, and transport across membrane or combination of them). Furthermore, there must be at least one source metabolite or first metabolite and at least one final product. The pathway occurs in a viscous medium, sometimes heterogeneous with different diffusion rates in likely spatially organized clusters. Moreover, there are signals which, without matter transfer, communicate information from one point of the pathway to another. These signals make metabolic pathways self-regulated and are designed to give response to microenvironment changes of source metabolite or final product concentrations.