Fig. 7.

Histogram of the biomass / glucose yield for the sub-models $s{m}_0$, $s{m}_4$ and $s{m}_8$ of JCVI-syn3A [31]. The x-axis shows the yield and the y-axis the count in logarithmic scale. The sub-models are plotted in different colors on top of each other with the smallest sub-model $s{m}_0$ in dark blue in the top, sub-model $s{m}_4$ in gray in the middle and the largest sub-model $s{m}_8$ in light blue in the bottom layer. The factor between $s{m}_4$ and $s{m}_8$ is exactly 16 over the complete distribution, the factor between $s{m}_0$ and $s{m}_4$ is 8.6 and 138.3 between $s{m}_0$ and $s{m}_8$. This shows that the bigger sub-models completely include all previous smaller sub-models and that additional carbon sources do not lead to new metabolic pathways, but rather integrate into and reinforce existing structures