title: Evolution of central carbon metabolism.
abstract: Organisms share a common core to their metabolic networks. But what determined this: chance, chemical necessity, or evolutionary optimization? In this issue of Molecular Cell, Noor et al. (2010) provide new evidence for selection of a network with optimal features from a broader set of possibilities.
authors.affiliation: School of Life Sciences, Oxford Brookes University, Headington, Oxford OX3 0BP, UK. dfell@brookes.ac.uk
authors.forename: David A
authors.initials: DA
authors.lastname: Fell