Analysis of flux estimates based on C-13-labelling experiments

Modelling of the fluxes in central metabolism can be performed by combining labelling experiments with metabolite balancing. Using this approach, multiple samples from a cultivation of Saccharomyces cerevisiae in metabolic and isotopic steady state were analysed, and the metabolic fluxes in central metabolism were estimated.

In the various samples, the estimates of the central metabolic pathways, the tricarboxylic acid cycle, the oxidative pentose phosphate pathway and the anaplerotic pathway, showed an unprecedented reproducibility. The high reproducibility was obtained with fractional labellings of individual carbon atoms as the calculational base, illustrating that the more complex modelling using isotopomers is not necessarily superior with respect to reproducibility of the flux estimates.

Based on these results some general difficulties in flux estimation are discussed.