Analysis and optimization of biochemical process reaction pathways. 1. Pathway sensitivities and identification of limiting steps

This work focuses on establishing a link between biochemical reactions and the macroscopic fermentation process by using a set of amplification/attenuation factors which influence individually each reaction step. A sensitivity analysis based on these factors yields a novel measure of reaction step influence on the overall process objective. These measures are generalized to any type of processing mode, primarily focusing on dynamic processes, for which it is shown how the sensitivities can be used to identify reaction network bottlenecks.