%0 Journal Article %T The Number of Catalytic Elements Is Crucial for the Emergence of Metabolic Cores %A Ildefonso M. De la Fuente %A Fernando Vadillo %A Mart¨ªn-Blas P¨¦rez-Pinilla %A Antonio Vera-L¨®pez %A Juan Veguillas %J PLOS ONE %D 2012 %I Public Library of Science (PLoS) %R 10.1371/journal.pone.0007510 %X Different studies show evidence that several unicellular organisms display a cellular metabolic structure characterized by a set of enzymes which are always in an active state (metabolic core), while the rest of the molecular catalytic reactions exhibit on-off changing states. This self-organized enzymatic configuration seems to be an intrinsic characteristic of metabolism, common to all living cellular organisms. In a recent analysis performed with dissipative metabolic networks (DMNs) we have shown that this global functional structure emerges in metabolic networks with a relatively high number of catalytic elements, under particular conditions of enzymatic covalent regulatory activity. %U http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0007510