AUTHOR=Schwender Jörg TITLE=Experimental Flux Measurements on a Network Scale JOURNAL=Frontiers in Plant Science VOLUME=2 YEAR=2011 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/plant-science/articles/10.3389/fpls.2011.00063 DOI=10.3389/fpls.2011.00063 ISSN=1664-462X ABSTRACT=

Metabolic flux is a fundamental property of living organisms. In recent years, methods for measuring metabolic flux in plants on a network scale have evolved further. One major challenge in studying flux in plants is the complexity of the plant’s metabolism. In particular, in the presence of parallel pathways in multiple cellular compartments, the core of plant central metabolism constitutes a complex network. Hence, a common problem with the reliability of the contemporary results of 13C-Metabolic Flux Analysis in plants is the substantial reduction in complexity that must be included in the simulated networks; this omission partly is due to limitations in computational simulations. Here, I discuss recent emerging strategies that will better address these shortcomings.