Metabolic flux analysis

Metabolic flux analysis is kind of like a big science puzzle.

You know how our body has different organs, like our heart and our lungs and our stomach? Well, those organs are made up of tiny little things called cells, and those cells are like little factories that make all sorts of things to keep us healthy.

Now, just like how you use different ingredients to make different things when you're baking a cake, our cells use different ingredients to make different things too. Those ingredients are called 'metabolites'.

And just like how you have to mix the right amount of flour and sugar and eggs and milk to make a cake, our cells have to use the right amount of metabolites to make the things they need to make.

Metabolic flux analysis is all about figuring out how much of each metabolite our cells are using at any given moment. It's kind of like a detective trying to solve a puzzle – by looking at all the clues, they can figure out how things are working.

Scientists use all sorts of fancy tools and methods to do metabolic flux analysis. They might use things like computers and lasers and radioactive isotopes to help them figure out what's going on inside our cells.

So by looking at the metabolic flux – which is like the amount and direction of the metabolites in our cells – scientists can learn a lot about how our cells work and how we stay healthy.