Design of stable large-scale metabolic networks

Abstract

In this work we propose an eigenvalue optimization approach to ensure steady state stability of the Embden-Meyerhof-Parnas pathway, the pentose-phosphate pathway and the phosphotransferase system of Escherichia coli. The model consists of eighteen differential equations that represent dynamic mass balances for extracellular glucose and intracellular metabolites and thirty kinetic rate expressions. The nonlinear optimization problem including stability constraints has been solved with reduced space Successive Quadratic Programming techniques within program IPOPT (Waechter and Biegler et al., 2006). Numerical results provide useful insights on the stability properties of the studied kinetic model. © 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.