The small world in biophysical systems structural properties of glycolysis and the TCA cycle in Escherichia coli.

It has been shown that the central metabolic network of Escherichia coli is of the small-world type. In this paper, we present that the metabolic network of glycolysis and TCA cycle as a part of the E. coli metabolism is also a small-world network. We found that the hubs of the studied network are consistent with those found in the complete metabolic network. The evolutionary meaning of this finding is discussed.