Lecture 20 : Introduction to Steady State Metabolic Modeling

According to Matthews and van Holde, metabolism is the totality of all chemical reactions that occur in living matter. This includes catabolic reactions, which are reactions that lead to the breakdown of molecules into smaller components, and anabolic reactions, which are responsible for the creation of more complex molecules (e.g. proteins, lipids, carbohydrates, and nucleic acids) from smaller components. These reactions are responsible for the release of energy from chemical bonds and the storage of this energy. Metabolic reactions are also responsible for the transduction and transmission of information (for example, via the generation of cGMP as a secondary messenger or mRNA as a substrate for protein translation).