Patent ID: 7440855

Claim:
In a method of analyzing the production of one or more selected metabolites of a biochemical reaction network producing metabolites, the method having as inputs reactions of the biochemical reaction network constructed from genomic and biochemical data, exchange fluxes on such of the produced metabolites as are of interest as inputs and outputs to the network, a stoichiometric matrix, developed from the reactions and including the exchange fluxes, defining participation of each network metabolite in each reaction and exchange flux of the network, and a system of linear equations and inequalities mathematically defining the network, the method serving to identify deletion sets of reactions that, when removed from the network, eliminate the capability of the network to produce a selected metabolite, an improvement to the method comprising: said linear equations and inequalities of the network mathematically forming a convex solution space called a flux cone, calculating generating vectors of the flux cone, which generating vectors are called extreme pathways; eliminating an internal reaction flux and pathways utilizing the eliminated internal reaction flux, thereby producing an altered network, determining if said eliminated internal reaction flux diminishes the capability of the network to produce an output metabolite of interest, and providing an output of said determination to a user wherein reaction fluxes determined to diminish the capability of the network correspond to a minimal deletion set which affect the capability of the network to produce the output metabolite of interest.