Fig. 3

Representation of the use of FBA in the modeling of a bacterial community consisting of two gut bacteria: F. prausnitzii and B. adolescentis. Fluxes are represented by arrows. Solid black arrows indicate uptake and secretion reactions of the bacteria, dashed black arrows indicate the flow of metabolites in and out of the system and dashed grey arrows indicate the formation of new biomass, where metabolites can no longer be secreted by the bacteria, thus leaving the system. The amount of flux is represented by the thickness of the arrows, a higher flux is a thicker arrow. The ratio of the produced biomass is used as a measure for the number of F. prausnitzii and B. adolescentis in the system, whereby the total biomass is kept constant. A higher flux through the biomass reaction represents more bacteria of that species in the system. The OF is the minimization of glucose uptake for both bacteria. Adapted after El-Semman et al. [20]