Metabolic Networks - Biological Networks - page 159

Chapter 8

Metabolic Networks

1 2 1

and

Maria Concetta Palumbo , Lorenzo Farina , Alfredo Colosimo

3∗

1 Department of Physiology and Pharmacology,
University of Rome 'La Sapienza', P.le Aldo Moro 10,
00182, Rome, Italy

Alessandro Giuliani

2

Department of Computer and Systems Science “A. Ruberti”,
University of Rome, 'La Sapienza', Via Ariosto 25,
00185, Rome, Italy
3 Department of Environment and Health,
Istituto Superiore di Sanità, Viale Regina Elena 299,
00161, Rome, Italy

The use of the term 'network' is more and more widespread in all fields of
biology. It evokes a systemic approach to biological problems able to overcome
the evident limitations of the strict reductionism of the past twenty years. The
expectations produced by taking into considerations not only the single elements
but even the intermingled 'web' of links connecting different parts of biological
entities, are huge. Nevertheless, we believe that the lack of consciousness that
networks, beside their biological 'likelihood', are modeling tools and not real
entities, could be detrimental to the exploitation of the full potential of this
paradigm.
Like any modeling tool the network paradigm has a range of application
going from situations in which it is particularly fit to situations in which its
application can be largely misleading. In this chapter we deal with an aspect of
biological entities that is particularly fit for the network approach: the
intermediate metabolism. This fit derives both from the existence of a privileged
formalization in which the relative role of nodes (metabolites) and arches
(enzymes) is immediately suggested by the system architecture. Here we will
discuss some applications of both graph theory based analysis and
multidimensional statistics method to metabolic network studies with the
emphasis on the derivation of biologically meaningful information.

∗

Corresponding author. E-mail: [e-mail]

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