Before revision:  In contrast to the established dynamic flux balance analysis, the proposed approach thereby allows to analyse dynamic changes in both the metabolic fluxes and the detailed biomass composition in situations of metabolic adaptation .
After revision:  In contrast to the established dynamic flux balance analysis, the proposed approach thereby allows to analyse dynamic changes in both the metabolic fluxes and the biomass composition during metabolic adaptations. We applied our algorithm in two case studies: a minimal nutrient uptake network, and an abstraction of core metabolic processes in bacteria. In the minimal model, we show that the optimized uptake rates reproduce the empirical Monod growth for bacterial cultures. For the network of core metabolic processes, the dynamic optimization algorithm predicted commonly observed metabolic adaptations, such as a diauxic switch with a preference ranking for different nutrients, re-utilization of waste products after depletion of the original substrate, and metabolic adaptation to an impending nutrient depletion. These examples illustrate how dynamic adaptations of enzyme expression can be predicted solely from an optimization principle .