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Regulating the cellular economy of supply and demand
Author(s) -
Hofmeyr Jan-Hendrik S.,
Cornish-Bowden Athel
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
febs letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.593
H-Index - 257
eISSN - 1873-3468
pISSN - 0014-5793
DOI - 10.1016/s0014-5793(00)01668-9
Subject(s) - supply and demand , metabolite , flux (metallurgy) , metabolism , cellular metabolism , economics , block (permutation group theory) , on demand , chemistry , microeconomics , biochemistry , mathematics , geometry , organic chemistry , commerce
Cellular metabolism is a molecular economy that is functionally organised into supply and demand blocks linked by metabolic products and cofactor cycles. Supply–demand analysis allows the behaviour, control and regulation of metabolism as a whole to be understood quantitatively in terms of the elasticities of supply and demand, which are experimentally measurable properties of the individual blocks. The kinetic and thermodynamic aspects of regulation are clearly distinguished. One important result is the demonstration that when flux is controlled by one block, the other block determines to which degree the concentration of the linking metabolite is homeostatically maintained.