Educational corner

All life activities in living cells, whether on a molecular levellike ATP production, a cellular level like cell division, a tissue level like muscle contraction or on a whole organ level like hearing for instance, are mediated via a very large number of inter-related metabolic networks. A metabolic network is defined as a cascade of controlled biochemical reactions and biophysical alterations that transform one, or more, substrate to one, or more, products. In human cells, nearly 4100 (four thousand and one hundred) of these networks have been delineated (Fig. 2) [1].