Which Metabolic Pathways Generate and Characterize the Flux Space? A Comparison among Elementary Modes, Extreme Pathways and Minimal Generators

Figure 2

Case-based scheme of the different network-based pathways. In each example metabolites are represented with circles connected with thin arrows that represent the fluxes. The reversible fluxes are double arrowed (solid arrowhead defines the sign criteria). The blue thick arrows denote generating vectors that correspond to extreme rays of the cone and the red ones to the rest of generating vectors. The axis at the bottom depicts the flux-space over {𝑣₁,𝑣₂,𝑣₃}, blue area, and its generating vectors.