Variational kinetics: elementary reaction kinetics via conic optimisation

Genome-scale modelling methods primarily predict reaction fluxes, whereas established high throughput experimental technologies primarily measure molecular species concentrations. This apparently paradoxical situation has arisen because implementing the non-linear constraints that represent reaction kinetic rate equations is challenging without resorting to convenient yet inaccurate approximations or to expansions that are valid only near a reference state. We present a mathematically and computationally tractable solution to this problem. First, we introduce a mathematical reformulation of established knowledge of metabolic reactions and reaction kinetics in matrix-vector notation. We then present variational kinetics, a novel approach that satisfies steady state reaction kinetics at genome scale by exponential conic optimisation. The non-linear rate law constraints are relaxed to exponential cones, which renders the feasible set convex, and satisfaction of elementary kinetics is recovered by minimising a strictly concave merit function over that set, which attains zero if, and only if, every rate law holds. We establish that a particular sequence of conic optimisation problems converges to a stationary point of this merit function, and that every such stationary point is a steady state satisfying elementary kinetics. Moiety conservation, thermodynamic constraints on elementary kinetic parameters, regularised steady states and linear optimisation of external reaction rates are each accommodated within the same conic formulation. We demonstrate the approach computationally on a genome-scale metabolic model.

Ronan M.T. Fleming, Ines Thiele · 2026