Metabolic modeling has gained accuracy in the last decades, but the resulting models are of high dimension and difficult to use for control purpose. Here we propose a mathematical approach to reduce high dimensional linearized metabolic models, which relies on time scale separation and the quasi steady state assumption. Contrary to the flux balance analysis assumption that the whole system reaches an equilibrium, our reduced model depends on a small system of differential equations which represents the slow variables dynamics. Moreover, we prove that the concentration of metabolites in quasi steady state is one order of magnitude lower than the concentration of metabolites with slow dynamics (under some flux conditions). Also, we propose a minimization strategy to estimate the reduced system parameters. The reduction of a toy network with the method presented here is compared with other approaches. Finally, our reduction technique is applied to an autotrophic microalgae metabolic network.Reactions from metabolites in QSS are faster than those from metabolites with slow dynamics. The input is I(t) = k[cos(t Á ω) + 1]. [Color figure can be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com]Notice that the all the metabolite concentrations have the same order of magnitude, as a consequence of defining Y i = X i /ε for the metabolites in the fast part. The parameters considered are specified in Table 1.

Metabolic modeling has been particularly efficient to understand the conditions affecting the metabolism of an organism. But so far, metabolic models have mainly considered static situations, assuming balanced growth. Some organisms are always far from equilibrium, and metabolic modeling must account for their dynamics. This leads to high-dimensional models in which metabolic fluxes are no more constant but vary depending on the intracellular concentrations. Such metabolic models must be reduced and simplified so that they can be calibrated and analyzed. Reducing these models of large dimension down to a model of smaller dimension is very challenging, specially, when dealing with nonlinear metabolic rates. Here, we propose a rigorous approach to reduce metabolic models using quasi-steady-state reduction based on Tikhonov's theorem, with a characterized and bounded reduction error. We assume that the metabolic network can be represented with MichaelisMenten enzymatic reactions that evolve at different time scales. In this simplest approach, some metabolites can accumulate. We consider the case with a continuous varying input in the model, such as light for microalgae, so that the system is never at a steady state. Furthermore, our analysis proves that metabolites in the slow part of the metabolic system reach higher concentrations (by one order of magnitude) than metabolites in the fast part under some flux conditions. A simple example illustrates our approach and the resulting accuracy of the reduction method.

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