Bordbar, AarashNagarajan, HarishLewis, Nathan ELatif, HaythemEbrahim, AliFederowicz, StephenSchellenberger, JanPalsson, Bernhard O2015-02-022014Bordbar, Aarash, Harish Nagarajan, Nathan E Lewis, Haythem Latif, Ali Ebrahim, Stephen Federowicz, Jan Schellenberger, and Bernhard O Palsson. 2014. “Minimal metabolic pathway structure is consistent with associated biomolecular interactions.” Molecular Systems Biology 10 (7): 737. doi:10.15252/msb.20145243. http://dx.doi.org/10.15252/msb.20145243.1744-4292http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:13890724Pathways are a universal paradigm for functionally describing cellular processes. Even though advances in high-throughput data generation have transformed biology, the core of our biological understanding, and hence data interpretation, is still predicated on human-defined pathways. Here, we introduce an unbiased, pathway structure for genome-scale metabolic networks defined based on principles of parsimony that do not mimic canonical human-defined textbook pathways. Instead, these minimal pathways better describe multiple independent pathway-associated biomolecular interaction datasets suggesting a functional organization for metabolism based on parsimonious use of cellular components. We use the inherent predictive capability of these pathways to experimentally discover novel transcriptional regulatory interactions in Escherichia coli metabolism for three transcription factors, effectively doubling the known regulatory roles for Nac and MntR. This study suggests an underlying and fundamental principle in the evolutionary selection of pathway structures; namely, that pathways may be minimal, independent, and segregated.en-USconstraint-based modelinggenetic interactionspathway analysisprotein-protein interactionstranscriptional regulatory networksJournal Article2015-02-0210.15252/msb.20145243