FIGURE 3.

Flux balance analysis - the basics of metabolic network modelling. For metabolic networks the initial step involves collecting the metabolic reactions that form the network. These reactions are represented by a stoichiometric matrix where each reaction is represented by the nodes and metabolites by the edges. The aim of flux balance analysis is to find the optimal vector (flux) that yields the maximum output for a given metabolite or metabolites (Z) through these reactions. For illustration, the glucose metabolism was used from Köenig et al., 2012 (König et al., 2012).