Bi-objective optimization of biochemical systems by linear programming

This paper proposes an iterative strategy to address the bi-objective optimization of biochemical systems. The biochemical system is firstly represented by the S-system formalism that steady-states can be explicitly represented as systems of linear algebraic equations. Then a minimax method is used iteratively to maximize the performance of a biochemical system while minimizing its cost. To illustrate the effectiveness of our theoretical results, the fermentation pathway in Saccharomyces cerevisiae is analyzed. Compared with existing optimization results in the literature, we also show that our results are better than existing ones with this illustrative biochemical system.