ABSTRACT
MCA is an analysis paradigm in the field of metabolism that was developed to give rigorous, quantitative answers to questions such as "What are the roles of the individual reactions in determining selected metabolite concentrations and fluxes through different segments of the pathway?" The major concepts of MCA were formulated in the 1970s by Kascer and BurnsH1L and Heinrich and Rapoport.H2L The ideas had earlier become well known to engineers who referred to them as sensitivity analysis. The analysis enables the determination of the sensitivity of a response or output of a dynamical system to variations in the value of a selected parameter in the system.
