The polco.metabolic package contains classes that implement the
{@link ch.javasoft.polco.xenum.ExtremeRayEnumerator ExtremeRayEnumerator}
interface using the EFM algorithm.
Elementary flux modes (EFMs) are non-decomposable minimal pathways of metabolic
networks under steady state conditions. Valid states of the network are linear
superpositions of elementary modes. Geometrically, the solution space shapes
a polyhedral cone (the flux cone), which is a well studied convex set in
computational geometry. Computing EFMs is thus basically equivalent to extreme
ray enumeration of polyhedral cones.
Most implementations to compute elementary modes are variants of the
double description method invented by Motzkin et al. [1]. Some
selected references relating to EFMs are given below.
References
- Motzkin, T. S., Raiffa, H., Thompson, G., and Thrall, R. M., "The double
description method", 1953
in Contributions to the Theory of Games II, volume 8 of Annals of
Math. Studies, pages51-73. Princeton University Press (Princeton/RI).
-
Fukuda, K. and Prodon, A., "Double description method revisited", 1995
in Combinatorics and Computer Science, pages 91-111.
-
Wagner, C., "Nullspace approach to determine the elementary modes of
chemical reaction systems", 2004,
J.Phys. Chem. B, 108, 2425-2431.
-
Gagneur, J. and Klamt, S., "Computation of elementary modes: A unifying
framework and the new binary approach", 2004,
BMC Bioinformatics, 5, 175.
-
Schuster, S. and Hilgetag, C., "On elementary flux modes in biochemical
reaction systems at steady state", 1994,
J.Biol. Syst., 2, 165-182.
- Terzer, M. and Stelling, J., "Large scale computation of elementary flux
modes with bit pattern trees",
Bioinformatics, August 1, 2008,
doi:10.1093/bioinformatics/btn401