The large-scale organization of metabolic networks

2000/10/01 by H. Jeong, B. Tombor, R. Albert +3 · 69 citations
Agricultural and Biological Sciences · Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Microbial Metabolic Engineering and Bioproduction #Plant and Biological Electrophysiology Studies #Slime Mold and Myxomycetes Research #cond-mat.dis-nn #cond-mat.stat-mech #q-bio

paper · pdf · doi:10.1038/35036627

published as Nature, v407 651-654 (2000) · PS file only. (Check http://www.nd.edu/~networks/cell for more information)

crossref issued 2000/10/01 · crossref published 2000/10/01 · crossref published-print 2000/10/01 · openalex publication_date 2000/10/01 · arxiv created 2000/10/19 · crossref created 2002/07/26 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · crossref deposited 2023/05/17 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/31 · crossref indexed 2026/08/04

Abstract

In a cell or microorganism the processes that generate mass, energy, information transfer, and cell fate specification are seamlessly integrated through a complex network of various cellular constituents and reactions. However, despite the key role these networks play in sustaining various cellular functions, their large-scale structure is essentially unknown. Here we present the first systematic comparative mathematical analysis of the metabolic networks of 43 organisms representing all three domains of life. We show that, despite significant variances in their individual constituents and pathways, these metabolic networks display the same topologic scaling properties demonstrating striking similarities to the inherent organization of complex non-biological systems. This suggests that the metabolic organization is not only identical for all living organisms, but complies with the design principles of robust and error-tolerant scale-free networks, and may represent a common blueprint for the large-scale organization of interactions among all cellular constituents.

Citations

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