Metabolism encompasses the biochemical basis of life and as such spans all biological disciplines. Many decades of basic research, primarily in microbes, have resulted in extensive characterization of metabolic components and regulatory paradigms. With this basic knowledge in hand and the technologies currently available, it has become feasible to move toward an understanding of microbial metabolism as a system rather than as a collection of component parts. Insight into the system will be generated by continued efforts to rigorously define metabolic components combined with renewed efforts to discover components and connections using in vivo-driven approaches. On the tail of a detailed understanding of components and connections that comprise metabolism will come the ability to generate a comprehensive mathematical model that describes the system. While microbes provide the logical organism for this work, the value of such a model would span biological disciplines. Described herein are approaches that can provide insight into metabolism and caveats of their use. The goal of this review is to emphasize that in silico, in vitro, and in vivo approaches must be used in combination to achieve a full understanding of microbial metabolism.

中文翻译：

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了解微生物的新陈代谢。

代谢涵盖了生命的生物化学基础，因此涵盖了所有生物学学科。数十年的基础研究，主要是微生物研究，已经导致了代谢成分和调控范式的广泛表征。掌握了这些基础知识和当前可用的技术后，逐渐可以理解微生物代谢为一个系统，而不是组成部分的集合。通过继续努力严格定义代谢成分，再加上使用体内驱动方法发现成分和连接的新努力，将产生对系统的洞察力。在详细了解构成新陈代谢的组件和连接的尾部时，将能够生成描述系统的综合数学模型。尽管微生物为这项工作提供了逻辑有机体，但这种模型的价值将跨越生物学学科。本文描述的是可以提供新陈代谢及其使用注意事项的见解的方法。这篇综述的目的是强调必须结合使用计算机模拟，体外和体内方法，以充分了解微生物的代谢。