Here we explore one of the major applications of steady-state
metabolic modeling: the prediction of organism growth rates under varying
perturbations. The two most common
perturbations studied with metabolic models are variations in the nutrients
available to the organism (e.g., changes in carbon source, nitrogen source, and
oxygen availability), and the presence of gene knockouts. These two perturbations can be combined since
the effects of gene knockouts can be modeled under different nutrient
mixes.
