Quantitative analysis of metabolism has been used to identify driver reactions occurring during cancer development and bottleneck reactions in the metabolic engineering of microorganisms. In this review, we compare the advantages and disadvantages of various metabolic analysis methods. We emphasize that metabolic flux analysis based on material balance is a critical method for quantitative investigations into cell metabolism. The absolute determination of metabolite concentration appears to be essential for evaluating the thermodynamic state of metabolism. Obtaining a precise read-out of regulatory mechanisms from the snapshot data remains challenging due to our insufficient knowledge of the control of metabolism.

代谢的定量分析已用于鉴定在癌症发展过程中发生的驱动程序反应和微生物代谢工程中的瓶颈反应。在这篇综述中，我们比较了各种代谢分析方法的优缺点。我们强调基于物质平衡的代谢通量分析是定量研究细胞代谢的关键方法。代谢物浓度的绝对测定对于评估代谢的热力学状态似乎至关重要。由于我们对代谢控制的了解不足，因此从快照数据中获得精确的调节机制读数仍然具有挑战性。