TY - JOUR T1 - Maximal growth rate requires minimal metabolic complexity JF - bioRxiv DO - 10.1101/167171 SP - 167171 AU - Daan H. de Groot AU - Robert Planqué AU - Coco van Boxtel AU - Frank J. Bruggeman AU - Bas Teusink Y1 - 2017/01/01 UR - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/07/21/167171.abstract N2 - The rate at which a microorganism produces offspring (specific growth rate) is a near universal selective pressure across microbial species. Growth requires metabolic enzymes, whose properties and expressions are moulded by evolution, within the bounds set by physical and chemical constraints. We asked therefore, if basic (bio)chemistry can determine the outcome of evolution. We found an evolutionary extremum principle that dictates that specific growth rate maximisation requires minimisation of metabolic complexity. This principle is a mathematical consequence of maximising specific growth rate under mass-conservation and protein-concentration constraints. We prove that the number of growth-limiting constraints bounds the number of active metabolic subnetworks (defined by Elementary Flux Modes) at maximal growth rate. Therefore, the complexity of metabolic behaviour is determined by the number of active protein constraints, not the size of the network. The consequences of the fundamental principle can be visualised in a graphical framework that provides a unified understanding of metabolic behaviours conserved across microbial species1, such as diauxic growth2, mixed substrate usage3 and overflow metabolism4. This work therefore provides a biochemical basis for the fundamental limits of evolution, and the driving forces of evolutionary change under growth-enabling conditions. ER -