Talk:Metabolic network
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Should not be redirected to Metabolism, a Metabolic network is a representation of the metabolism, and therefore a distinct entity. It is a tool used in Bioinformatics and Sytems biology.
[edit] Metabolic network = Pathway?
Is this the same thing as a metabolic pathway? There is no definition of what a metabilic network is. All the sentences are ambiguous and use complicated terms! -Pgan002 09:32, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
- No, it is not the same, or to be more precise metabolic pathways are subsets of metabolic networks. Now I agree that the term metabolic network needs a clearer definition and maybe this article should be merged with Metabolic network modelling. Blastwizard 12:52, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Merge
In papers such as this the term "metabolic network" is used as a synonym of "all the metabolic pathways in a cell". I think this page should therefore be merged with metabolism as a sub-section on "Prediction of metabolic networks". TimVickers 03:22, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
- Disagree. I'm afraid, it is not because you have one reference (not publicly available) where the authors interchange the two terms that it should be merged, there is a subtle difference between a metabolic pathway and metabolic network, a pathway is a subset of a network in graph theory anyway. In addition, metabolic pathways are usually defined in a static manner, whereas metabolic networks can consider transient pathways via flux analysis. Blastwizard 09:48, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
My Oxford dictionary of Biochemistry and Mol Biology defines Metabolic pathway as "any series of connected (enzymatic or other) reactions occurring in a cell or organism." Is the difference between the complete set of metabolic pathways in a cell (its metabolism) and its metabolic network that the network contains protein interaction data, which are not chemical reactions? The definition here seems to imply this "An important asset to such analyses is the (partial) reconstruction of cellular networks, that is the collection and visualization of all potential physiologically relevant cellular processes. The reconstruction serves to sort the individual proteins, and thus the potential molecular functions, into a context (like pathways or protein complexes) and as such enables improved functional annotation."[1] This also seems to be the sense the term is used here.[2] I'll try a rewrite of this page to make it distinct from the metabolic pathways pages, otherwise this merge/delete discussion is going to come up again and again. TimVickers 17:28, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
- ^ Francke C, Siezen R, Teusink B (2005). "Reconstructing the metabolic network of a bacterium from its genome". Trends Microbiol 13 (11): 550-8. PMID 16169729.
- ^ Eungdamrong N, Iyengar R (2004). "Computational approaches for modeling regulatory cellular networks". Trends Cell Biol 14 (12): 661-9. PMID 15564042.
