Elementary flux modes (EFMs) are an important concept in metabolic pathway analysis and for the derivation of macroscopic dynamic models. However, the computation of elementary flux vectors is facing combinatorial explosion with the size of the metabolic network, which hinders widespread application. This study proposes a systematic elementary flux mode reduction procedure to derive reduced-order dynamic models starting from an initial set of EFMs either generated by complete enumeration or subset selection. The procedure proceeds in several steps, including geometric and optimization-based criteria. The methodology ends up with a macroscopic bioreaction scheme with a reaction number smaller than that of the measured species, and shows very satisfactory prediction results, as illustrated with data of batch cultures of CHO-320 cells.

基本通量模式 (EFM) 是代谢途径分析和宏观动态模型推导中的一个重要概念。然而，基本通量向量的计算面临着与代谢网络规模的组合爆炸，这阻碍了广泛的应用。本研究提出了一种系统的基本通量模式简化程序，以从通过完整枚举或子集选择生成的初始 EFM 集开始推导出降阶动态模型。该过程分几个步骤进行，包括基于几何和优化的标准。该方法最终得到一个宏观生物反应方案，其反应数小于被测物种的反应数，并显示出非常令人满意的预测结果，如 CHO-320 细胞的批量培养数据所示。