In living cells, biochemical reaction networks often function in nonequilibrium steady states. Under these conditions, the networks necessarily have cyclic reaction kinetics that are maintained by sustained constant input and output, i.e., pumping. To differentiate this state from an equilibrium state without flux, we propose a microscopic method based on concentration fluctuation measurements, via fluorescence correlation spectroscopy, and statistical analyses of high-order correlations and cross correlations beyond the standard fluorescence correlation spectroscopy autocorrelation. We show that, for equilibrium systems with time reversibility, the correlation functions possess certain symmetries, the violation of which is a measure of steady-state fluxes in reaction cycles. This result demonstrates the theoretical basis for experimentally measuring reaction fluxes in a biochemical network in situ and the importance of single-molecule measurements in providing fundamental information on nonequilibrium steadystates in biochemistry. recent study on enzyme kinetics of single horseradish peroxidase molecules has observed an oscillatory timecorrelation function, suggesting an irreversible, nonequilibrium nature of the biochemical reaction (4). In single-molecule enzymology (5, 6), the consecutive turnover of substrates to products catalyzed by a single enzyme molecule is recorded in terms of the fluorescence of enzyme-substrate or enzymeproduct complexes. One essential feature of such a measurement is that the concentrations of the substrate, [S], and the product, [P], are approximately constant over the course of the entire experiment. Thus, although the enzyme molecule is subject to stochastic fluctuations, on average it participates in a stationary process with a net circular flux. The flux is zero if and only if the substrate and product concentrations satisfy conditions of [P]͞[S] ϭ K eq , where K eq is the equilibrium constant for the reaction S º P, both in the presence and absence of the enzyme. In this unique situation, the reaction is at a chemical equilibrium.