ArticleNature communications2015
Lower glycolysis carries a higher flux than any biochemically possible alternative.
Article in Nature communications, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 19 papers.
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Who cites it
19 citing papers in PubMed.
- Convergent evolution of aerobic fermentation through divergent mechanisms acting on key shared glycolytic genes.The EMBO journal · 2026Article
- Reference-guided computational framework identifies microenvironment metabolic subtypes and targets using pan-cancer single-cell datasets.Genome medicine · 2025Article
- Glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase homologs as bifunctional gatekeepers of metabolic segregation inProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Convergent evolution of aerobic fermentation through divergent mechanisms acting on key shared glycolytic genes.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Free-energy transduction mechanisms shape the flux space of metabolic networks.Biophysical journal · 2024Article
- Recruitment of a Middling Promiscuous Enzyme Drives Adaptive Metabolic Evolution in Escherichia coli.Molecular biology and evolution · 2023Article
- Article
- Coral holobiont cues prime Endozoicomonas for a symbiotic lifestyle.The ISME journal · 2022Article
- A moonlighting role for enzymes of glycolysis in the co-localization of mitochondria and chloroplasts.Nature communications · 2020Article
- Interaction of N-acetyl-l-glutamate kinase with the PII signal transducer in the non-photosynthetic alga Polytomella parva: Co-evolution towards a hetero-oligomeric enzyme.The FEBS journal · 2020Article
- Evolutionary design principles in metabolism.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2019Review
- Pareto Optimality Explanation of the Glycolytic Alternatives in Nature.Scientific reports · 2019Article
- Nascent-protein ubiquitination is required for heat shock-induced gene downregulation in human cells.Nature structural & molecular biology · 2019Article
- Interrogating metabolism as an electron flow system.Current opinion in systems biology · 2019Review
- Enumerating all possible biosynthetic pathways in metabolic networks.Scientific reports · 2018Article
- A review of computational tools for design and reconstruction of metabolic pathways.Synthetic and systems biotechnology · 2017Review
- Redesigning metabolism based on orthogonality principles.Nature communications · 2017Article
- Beyond the Hypercube: Evolutionary Accessibility of Fitness Landscapes with Realistic Mutational Networks.PLoS computational biology · 2016Article
- The RNA world and the origin of metabolic enzymes.Biochemical Society transactions · 2014Review
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The universality of many pathways of core metabolism suggests a strong role for evolutionary selection, but it remains unclear whether existing pathways have been selected from a large or small set of biochemical possibilities. To address this question, we construct in silico all possible biochemically feasible alternatives to the trunk pathway of glycolysis and gluconeogenesis, one of the most highly conserved pathways in metabolism. We show that, even though a large number of alternative pathways exist, the alternatives carry lower flux than the real pathway under typical physiological conditions. We also find that if physiological conditions were different, different pathways could outperform those found in nature. Together, our results demonstrate how thermodynamic and biophysical constraints restrict the biochemical alternatives that are open to evolution, and suggest that the existing trunk pathway of glycolysis and gluconeogenesis may represent a maximal flux solution.
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