Genome-Scale Models of Metabolic and Regulatory Networks - Systems Biology: Networks, Models, and Applications - page 236

Figure 8.2 Commonly utilized constraint-based analysis methods. A number
of constraint-based analysis methods can be applied to studying the solution
spaces defined by imposing physicochemical and other constraints on
metabolic network function. The methods illustrated here can be roughly
classified to ones that study optimal solutions within the solution space and
those that analyze the entire solution space. See the main text for a more
detailed description of the different methods.

where the environmental conditions chosen for a particular simulation
are set by the maximal flux constraints for exchange fluxes. The maxi-
mal value of the objective function m max c T v corresponds to the growth

rate predicted by the FBA model under particular environmental con-
ditions. The comparison of these growth rates and other predictions by
FBA models to experimental data will be discussed in greater detail
later in this chapter.

=

Alternative optimal solutions . Because of redundancies in the metabolic
reaction network there are usually multiple alternative optimal solu-
tions to the optimization problem (4), so that FBA does not necessarily