DATE2025.05.20 #Press Releases
New Insights into the Relationship Between Metabolic Dynamics Responsiveness and Network Structure
Summary
Assistant Professor Yusuke Himeoka and Professor Chikara Furusawa from the School of Science, The University of Tokyo, conducted a study on the factors that determine the "strength of response" of metabolic states when subjected to disturbances, using a differential equation model of Escherichia coli metabolism. Their findings revealed that two key factors are crucial for a strong metabolic response to disturbances: the dynamics of cofactors such as ATP, and the sparsity of the network structure (i.e., fewer metabolic reactions per metabolite).
This research provides important mathematical foundations for understanding "which reaction systems can continue to function robustly despite disturbances." It is expected to contribute to the fields of synthetic biology, which aims to create synthetic chemical cells, and metabolic engineering, which seeks to modify microbial metabolic systems for the production of valuable substances.
Figure: Metabolic Responsiveness to Perturbations was Analyzed Using Differential Equation Models of Metabolic Networks