The concept of Elementary Flux Mode (EFM) has been widely used for the past 20 years. However, its application to genome-scale metabolic networks (GSMNs) is still under development because of methodological limitations. Therefore, novel approaches are demanded to extend the application of EFMs. A novel family of methods based on optimization is emerging that provides us with a subset of EFMs. Because the calculation of the whole set of EFMs goes beyond our capacity, performing a selective search is a proper strategy.