B. O. Palsson develops quantitative descriptions of metabolism. With J. S. Edwards, he reconstructed the metabolic capabilities of Escherichia coli MG1655 by combining its annotated genome, biochemical literature and strain-specific information. The resulting network connected hundreds of genes to the chemical reactions their products support.[ref]
The contribution made a distinction experimentally useful: a list of genes is not yet a prediction of how a cell can grow. A metabolic network adds reaction stoichiometry and environmental constraints, allowing predicted growth or nutrient requirements to be compared with measurements. Such predictions remain conditional on the reactions and constraints included.
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