The concept of structural-metabolic cellular complexes was first conceived in 1970 by A. M. Kuzin of the USSR Academy of Sciences, and adopted in 1972 by Paul A. Srere of the University of Texas for the enzymes of the citric acid cycle. This hypothesis was well accepted in the former USSR and further developed for the complex of glycolytic enzymes (Embden-Meyerhof-Parnas pathway) by B.I. Kurganov and  A.E. Lyubarev. In the mid-1970s, the group of F.M. Clarke at the University of Queensland, Australia also worked on the concept. The name "metabolon" was first proposed in 1985 by Paul Srere during a lecture in Debrecen, Hungary.