Advances in the Modeling of Metabolic Flux Regulation

Dear Colleagues,

Our approach to mathematically describing a cell population’s behaviour has evolved in recent decades. From the use of Monod kinetics, when a limiting nutrient controls cell behaviour, novel modeling approaches are emerging based on a genome-wide description of a biosystem, integrating the various available “omics” datasets. However, do we always need that level of complexity to solve a problem of bioprocess optimization or to elucidate the mechanisms of a metabolic disease?

Although steady state approaches still prove useful, dynamic modeling of cell metabolism is gaining in interest. Besides its capacity to “animate” a biosystem’s metabolic network, such models also allow us to follow the time-evolution of metabolic fluxes performing a dynamic flux analysis. Indeed, such in silico simulation tools enable observations that are tedious/impossible to perform experimentally.

At the step of model structure build-up, omics data strengthen the biological relevancy of a study, but their connection to the metabolic flux regulation mechanism will also confer a potential enhancement of model predictive capacity. Indeed, the process of building the model structure can be highly instructive, while testing hypotheses on the network map and flux regulation mechanisms.

In this Special Issue, our aim is to bring together a coherent set of contributions drawing from the state-of-the-art in the modelling of metabolic flux regulation mechanisms. For example, without being restrictive to, we see contributions that address the following issues:

• Optimization algorithms for optimizing the description of a flux regulatory mechanism within a metabolic flux network.
• Case studies-oriented contributions in cell biology, biomedicine, and bioprocesses.
• Multi-level studies connecting signalling, genomic, transcriptomics, interactomics, etc. to the regulation of a metabolic flux or a distributed set of fluxes.

There is no restriction on cell types nor biosystems. By biomedicine, we refer to studies on metabolic diseases and on the study of a metabolic target. Approach limitations and future trends are important issues to be discussed in each study.

Prof. Dr. Mario Jolicoeur
Guest Editor

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