Flux Imbalance Analysis and the Sensitivity of Cellular Growth to Changes in Metabolite Pools
Figure 3
Shadow prices correlate with temporal variation in metabolite abundance in E. coli.
The height of each bar represents the number of individual metabolites that fall within a bin. Boundaries between the blue and red regions in each panel correspond to the mean values of shadow prices and temporal variation, respectively. We expect that metabolites with negative shadow prices should have small temporal variation, while metabolites with large temporal variation should have small or zero shadow prices (gray regions). Furthermore, metabolites should not exhibit large temporal variation if they have large negative shadow prices (red region). Bars tend not to fall in the red regions (as quantified statistically, see reported p-values, Table S2) highlighting the capacity of shadow prices to capture features of metabolite dynamics. Subplots correspond to different experimental conditions: (A) nitrogen upshift (B) glucose starvation, (C) acetate limitation, and (D) glycerol limitation.