Constraint-based analysis has become a widely used method to study metabolic
networks. While some of the associated algorithms can be applied to genome-
scale network reconstructions with several thousands of reactions, others are
limited to small or medium-sized models. In 2015, Erdrich et al. introduced a
method called NetworkReducer, which reduces large metabolic networks to
smaller subnetworks, while preserving a set of biological requirements that
can be specified by the user. Already in 2001, Burgard et al. developed a
mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) approach for computing minimal
reaction sets under a given growth requirement
