14: Principles of Metabolic Regulation
- Page ID
- 15017
- 14.1: Regulation of Metabolic Pathways
- Exquisite mechanisms have evolved that control the flux of metabolites through metabolic pathways to insure that the output of the pathways meets biological demand and that energy in the form of ATP is not wasted by having opposing pathways run concomitantly in the same cell.
- 14.2: Basic Principles of Metabolic Control Analysis (MCA)
- Enzyme kinetics may seem difficult given the complicated mathematical derivations, the number of chemical species involved (an enzyme and all its substrates and products), the number of steps in the mechanism, and the large number of rate, kinetic, and dissociation constants.
- 14.3: The Flux Control Coefficient
- Metabolic control analysis is one way to address the complexity of dynamic changes of species in a complex metabolic system. As such an understanding of MCA would apply to complex signal transduction pathways as well as to an understanding of the emerging discipline of systems biology. In MCA external inputs (source) and outputs (exits) pools or reservoirs exists which are connected to the internal metabolic enzymes, reactants and products of the pathway connecting the two external reservoirs.
Thumbnail: Overview of regulatory interactions involved in metabolic regulatory networks. The function of metabolic networks are governed by constraints. The regulation of a metabolic network involves a tight interplay between different cellular networks such as signalling and gene networks and by interactions with its environment. The enzyme capacity is the net result of the amount of enzyme expressed and its activity as dictated by post-translational modification and allosteric regulation. Metabolite pools and fluxes are considered as the outputs of metabolic reaction networks and can be involved in various regulatory feedback loops to other networks within the metabolic reaction networks as indicated by the dashed arrows. (CC BY 3.0; Jan Berkhout, Frank J. Bruggeman, and Bas Teusink via MDPI)