Understanding the Control of Metabolism

This book turns on its head what I was taught about what controls metabolite flow through a pathway. It covers highly remarkable discoveries concerning which steps control changes in metabolite levels: those at the end rather than the start of pathways. This is amazing because it explains why decades of effort by bioengineers to overproduce particular metabolites was unsuccessful.

In response to a request from such a project, I explained how to block the inhibitory regulation by the early pathway step but added that, according to metabolic control theory, this would leave the end-product levels unchanged. I was correct on… show more.