The goal of this course is to give an introduction to the most important mathematical and algorithmic ideas underlying the constraint-based analysis of genome-scale metabolic networks, with applications to systems biology and biotechnology.

We will discuss the steady-state flux cone, flux balance analysis (FBA), flux variability analysis (FVA), flux coupling analysis (FCA), thermodynamic constraints, elementary flux modes (EFMs), and optimality principles for metabolic regulation. On the algorithmic side, the focus will be on linear and mixed-integer optimisation methods.