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Sample records for metabolic reaction networks

  1. Integration of metabolome data with metabolic networks reveals reporter reactions

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Çakir, Tunahan; Patil, Kiran Raosaheb; Önsan, Zeynep Ilsen

    2006-01-01

    Interpreting quantitative metabolome data is a difficult task owing to the high connectivity in metabolic networks and inherent interdependency between enzymatic regulation, metabolite levels and fluxes. Here we present a hypothesis-driven algorithm for the integration of such data with metabolic...... network topology. The algorithm thus enables identification of reporter reactions, which are reactions where there are significant coordinated changes in the level of surrounding metabolites following environmental/genetic perturbations. Applicability of the algorithm is demonstrated by using data from...... is measured. By combining the results with transcriptome data, we further show that it is possible to infer whether the reactions are hierarchically or metabolically regulated. Hereby, the reported approach represents an attempt to map different layers of regulation within metabolic networks through...

  2. Microalgal Metabolic Network Model Refinement through High-Throughput Functional Metabolic Profiling

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Chaiboonchoe, Amphun; Dohai, Bushra Saeed; Cai, Hong; Nelson, David R.; Jijakli, Kenan; Salehi-Ashtiani, Kourosh

    2014-01-01

    Metabolic modeling provides the means to define metabolic processes at a systems level; however, genome-scale metabolic models often remain incomplete in their description of metabolic networks and may include reactions that are experimentally unverified. This shortcoming is exacerbated in reconstructed models of newly isolated algal species, as there may be little to no biochemical evidence available for the metabolism of such isolates. The phenotype microarray (PM) technology (Biolog, Hayward, CA, USA) provides an efficient, high-throughput method to functionally define cellular metabolic activities in response to a large array of entry metabolites. The platform can experimentally verify many of the unverified reactions in a network model as well as identify missing or new reactions in the reconstructed metabolic model. The PM technology has been used for metabolic phenotyping of non-photosynthetic bacteria and fungi, but it has not been reported for the phenotyping of microalgae. Here, we introduce the use of PM assays in a systematic way to the study of microalgae, applying it specifically to the green microalgal model species Chlamydomonas reinhardtii. The results obtained in this study validate a number of existing annotated metabolic reactions and identify a number of novel and unexpected metabolites. The obtained information was used to expand and refine the existing COBRA-based C. reinhardtii metabolic network model iRC1080. Over 254 reactions were added to the network, and the effects of these additions on flux distribution within the network are described. The novel reactions include the support of metabolism by a number of d-amino acids, l-dipeptides, and l-tripeptides as nitrogen sources, as well as support of cellular respiration by cysteamine-S-phosphate as a phosphorus source. The protocol developed here can be used as a foundation to functionally profile other microalgae such as known microalgae mutants and novel isolates.

  3. Microalgal Metabolic Network Model Refinement through High-Throughput Functional Metabolic Profiling

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Chaiboonchoe, Amphun; Dohai, Bushra Saeed; Cai, Hong; Nelson, David R. [Division of Science and Math, New York University Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi (United Arab Emirates); Center for Genomics and Systems Biology (CGSB), New York University Abu Dhabi Institute, Abu Dhabi (United Arab Emirates); Jijakli, Kenan [Division of Science and Math, New York University Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi (United Arab Emirates); Center for Genomics and Systems Biology (CGSB), New York University Abu Dhabi Institute, Abu Dhabi (United Arab Emirates); Engineering Division, Biofinery, Manhattan, KS (United States); Salehi-Ashtiani, Kourosh, E-mail: ksa3@nyu.edu [Division of Science and Math, New York University Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi (United Arab Emirates); Center for Genomics and Systems Biology (CGSB), New York University Abu Dhabi Institute, Abu Dhabi (United Arab Emirates)

    2014-12-10

    Metabolic modeling provides the means to define metabolic processes at a systems level; however, genome-scale metabolic models often remain incomplete in their description of metabolic networks and may include reactions that are experimentally unverified. This shortcoming is exacerbated in reconstructed models of newly isolated algal species, as there may be little to no biochemical evidence available for the metabolism of such isolates. The phenotype microarray (PM) technology (Biolog, Hayward, CA, USA) provides an efficient, high-throughput method to functionally define cellular metabolic activities in response to a large array of entry metabolites. The platform can experimentally verify many of the unverified reactions in a network model as well as identify missing or new reactions in the reconstructed metabolic model. The PM technology has been used for metabolic phenotyping of non-photosynthetic bacteria and fungi, but it has not been reported for the phenotyping of microalgae. Here, we introduce the use of PM assays in a systematic way to the study of microalgae, applying it specifically to the green microalgal model species Chlamydomonas reinhardtii. The results obtained in this study validate a number of existing annotated metabolic reactions and identify a number of novel and unexpected metabolites. The obtained information was used to expand and refine the existing COBRA-based C. reinhardtii metabolic network model iRC1080. Over 254 reactions were added to the network, and the effects of these additions on flux distribution within the network are described. The novel reactions include the support of metabolism by a number of d-amino acids, l-dipeptides, and l-tripeptides as nitrogen sources, as well as support of cellular respiration by cysteamine-S-phosphate as a phosphorus source. The protocol developed here can be used as a foundation to functionally profile other microalgae such as known microalgae mutants and novel isolates.

  4. Slave nodes and the controllability of metabolic networks

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Kim, Dong-Hee; Motter, Adilson E

    2009-01-01

    Recent work on synthetic rescues has shown that the targeted deletion of specific metabolic genes can often be used to rescue otherwise non-viable mutants. This raises a fundamental biophysical question: to what extent can the whole-cell behavior of a large metabolic network be controlled by constraining the flux of one or more reactions in the network? This touches upon the issue of the number of degrees of freedom contained by one such network. Using the metabolic network of Escherichia coli as a model system, here we address this question theoretically by exploring not only reaction deletions, but also a continuum of all possible reaction expression levels. We show that the behavior of the metabolic network can be largely manipulated by the pinned expression of a single reaction. In particular, a relevant fraction of the metabolic reactions exhibits canalizing interactions, in that the specification of one reaction flux determines cellular growth as well as the fluxes of most other reactions in optimal steady states. The activity of individual reactions can thus be used as surrogates to monitor and possibly control cellular growth and other whole-cell behaviors. In addition to its implications for the study of control processes, our methodology provides a new approach to study how the integrated dynamics of the entire metabolic network emerges from the coordinated behavior of its component parts.

  5. Environmental versatility promotes modularity in genome-scale metabolic networks.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Samal, Areejit; Wagner, Andreas; Martin, Olivier C

    2011-08-24

    The ubiquity of modules in biological networks may result from an evolutionary benefit of a modular organization. For instance, modularity may increase the rate of adaptive evolution, because modules can be easily combined into new arrangements that may benefit their carrier. Conversely, modularity may emerge as a by-product of some trait. We here ask whether this last scenario may play a role in genome-scale metabolic networks that need to sustain life in one or more chemical environments. For such networks, we define a network module as a maximal set of reactions that are fully coupled, i.e., whose fluxes can only vary in fixed proportions. This definition overcomes limitations of purely graph based analyses of metabolism by exploiting the functional links between reactions. We call a metabolic network viable in a given chemical environment if it can synthesize all of an organism's biomass compounds from nutrients in this environment. An organism's metabolism is highly versatile if it can sustain life in many different chemical environments. We here ask whether versatility affects the modularity of metabolic networks. Using recently developed techniques to randomly sample large numbers of viable metabolic networks from a vast space of metabolic networks, we use flux balance analysis to study in silico metabolic networks that differ in their versatility. We find that highly versatile networks are also highly modular. They contain more modules and more reactions that are organized into modules. Most or all reactions in a module are associated with the same biochemical pathways. Modules that arise in highly versatile networks generally involve reactions that process nutrients or closely related chemicals. We also observe that the metabolism of E. coli is significantly more modular than even our most versatile networks. Our work shows that modularity in metabolic networks can be a by-product of functional constraints, e.g., the need to sustain life in multiple

  6. Environmental versatility promotes modularity in genome-scale metabolic networks

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Wagner Andreas

    2011-08-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background The ubiquity of modules in biological networks may result from an evolutionary benefit of a modular organization. For instance, modularity may increase the rate of adaptive evolution, because modules can be easily combined into new arrangements that may benefit their carrier. Conversely, modularity may emerge as a by-product of some trait. We here ask whether this last scenario may play a role in genome-scale metabolic networks that need to sustain life in one or more chemical environments. For such networks, we define a network module as a maximal set of reactions that are fully coupled, i.e., whose fluxes can only vary in fixed proportions. This definition overcomes limitations of purely graph based analyses of metabolism by exploiting the functional links between reactions. We call a metabolic network viable in a given chemical environment if it can synthesize all of an organism's biomass compounds from nutrients in this environment. An organism's metabolism is highly versatile if it can sustain life in many different chemical environments. We here ask whether versatility affects the modularity of metabolic networks. Results Using recently developed techniques to randomly sample large numbers of viable metabolic networks from a vast space of metabolic networks, we use flux balance analysis to study in silico metabolic networks that differ in their versatility. We find that highly versatile networks are also highly modular. They contain more modules and more reactions that are organized into modules. Most or all reactions in a module are associated with the same biochemical pathways. Modules that arise in highly versatile networks generally involve reactions that process nutrients or closely related chemicals. We also observe that the metabolism of E. coli is significantly more modular than even our most versatile networks. Conclusions Our work shows that modularity in metabolic networks can be a by-product of functional

  7. Control of fluxes in metabolic networks

    Science.gov (United States)

    Basler, Georg; Nikoloski, Zoran; Larhlimi, Abdelhalim; Barabási, Albert-László; Liu, Yang-Yu

    2016-01-01

    Understanding the control of large-scale metabolic networks is central to biology and medicine. However, existing approaches either require specifying a cellular objective or can only be used for small networks. We introduce new coupling types describing the relations between reaction activities, and develop an efficient computational framework, which does not require any cellular objective for systematic studies of large-scale metabolism. We identify the driver reactions facilitating control of 23 metabolic networks from all kingdoms of life. We find that unicellular organisms require a smaller degree of control than multicellular organisms. Driver reactions are under complex cellular regulation in Escherichia coli, indicating their preeminent role in facilitating cellular control. In human cancer cells, driver reactions play pivotal roles in malignancy and represent potential therapeutic targets. The developed framework helps us gain insights into regulatory principles of diseases and facilitates design of engineering strategies at the interface of gene regulation, signaling, and metabolism. PMID:27197218

  8. Hierarchical analysis of dependency in metabolic networks.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gagneur, Julien; Jackson, David B; Casari, Georg

    2003-05-22

    Elucidation of metabolic networks for an increasing number of organisms reveals that even small networks can contain thousands of reactions and chemical species. The intimate connectivity between components complicates their decomposition into biologically meaningful sub-networks. Moreover, traditional higher-order representations of metabolic networks as metabolic pathways, suffers from the lack of rigorous definition, yielding pathways of disparate content and size. We introduce a hierarchical representation that emphasizes the gross organization of metabolic networks in largely independent pathways and sub-systems at several levels of independence. The approach highlights the coupling of different pathways and the shared compounds responsible for those couplings. By assessing our results on Escherichia coli (E.coli metabolic reactions, Genetic Circuits Research Group, University of California, San Diego, http://gcrg.ucsd.edu/organisms/ecoli.html, 'model v 1.01. reactions') against accepted biochemical annotations, we provide the first systematic synopsis of an organism's metabolism. Comparison with operons of E.coli shows that low-level clusters are reflected in genome organization and gene regulation. Source code, data sets and supplementary information are available at http://www.mas.ecp.fr/labo/equipe/gagneur/hierarchy/hierarchy.html

  9. Flux networks in metabolic graphs

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Warren, P B; Queiros, S M Duarte; Jones, J L

    2009-01-01

    A metabolic model can be represented as a bipartite graph comprising linked reaction and metabolite nodes. Here it is shown how a network of conserved fluxes can be assigned to the edges of such a graph by combining the reaction fluxes with a conserved metabolite property such as molecular weight. A similar flux network can be constructed by combining the primal and dual solutions to the linear programming problem that typically arises in constraint-based modelling. Such constructions may help with the visualization of flux distributions in complex metabolic networks. The analysis also explains the strong correlation observed between metabolite shadow prices (the dual linear programming variables) and conserved metabolite properties. The methods were applied to recent metabolic models for Escherichia coli, Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Methanosarcina barkeri. Detailed results are reported for E. coli; similar results were found for other organisms

  10. Identification of Conserved Moieties in Metabolic Networks by Graph Theoretical Analysis of Atom Transition Networks

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    Haraldsdóttir, Hulda S.; Fleming, Ronan M. T.

    2016-01-01

    Conserved moieties are groups of atoms that remain intact in all reactions of a metabolic network. Identification of conserved moieties gives insight into the structure and function of metabolic networks and facilitates metabolic modelling. All moiety conservation relations can be represented as nonnegative integer vectors in the left null space of the stoichiometric matrix corresponding to a biochemical network. Algorithms exist to compute such vectors based only on reaction stoichiometry but their computational complexity has limited their application to relatively small metabolic networks. Moreover, the vectors returned by existing algorithms do not, in general, represent conservation of a specific moiety with a defined atomic structure. Here, we show that identification of conserved moieties requires data on reaction atom mappings in addition to stoichiometry. We present a novel method to identify conserved moieties in metabolic networks by graph theoretical analysis of their underlying atom transition networks. Our method returns the exact group of atoms belonging to each conserved moiety as well as the corresponding vector in the left null space of the stoichiometric matrix. It can be implemented as a pipeline of polynomial time algorithms. Our implementation completes in under five minutes on a metabolic network with more than 4,000 mass balanced reactions. The scalability of the method enables extension of existing applications for moiety conservation relations to genome-scale metabolic networks. We also give examples of new applications made possible by elucidating the atomic structure of conserved moieties. PMID:27870845

  11. Toward the automated generation of genome-scale metabolic networks in the SEED.

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    DeJongh, Matthew; Formsma, Kevin; Boillot, Paul; Gould, John; Rycenga, Matthew; Best, Aaron

    2007-04-26

    Current methods for the automated generation of genome-scale metabolic networks focus on genome annotation and preliminary biochemical reaction network assembly, but do not adequately address the process of identifying and filling gaps in the reaction network, and verifying that the network is suitable for systems level analysis. Thus, current methods are only sufficient for generating draft-quality networks, and refinement of the reaction network is still largely a manual, labor-intensive process. We have developed a method for generating genome-scale metabolic networks that produces substantially complete reaction networks, suitable for systems level analysis. Our method partitions the reaction space of central and intermediary metabolism into discrete, interconnected components that can be assembled and verified in isolation from each other, and then integrated and verified at the level of their interconnectivity. We have developed a database of components that are common across organisms, and have created tools for automatically assembling appropriate components for a particular organism based on the metabolic pathways encoded in the organism's genome. This focuses manual efforts on that portion of an organism's metabolism that is not yet represented in the database. We have demonstrated the efficacy of our method by reverse-engineering and automatically regenerating the reaction network from a published genome-scale metabolic model for Staphylococcus aureus. Additionally, we have verified that our method capitalizes on the database of common reaction network components created for S. aureus, by using these components to generate substantially complete reconstructions of the reaction networks from three other published metabolic models (Escherichia coli, Helicobacter pylori, and Lactococcus lactis). We have implemented our tools and database within the SEED, an open-source software environment for comparative genome annotation and analysis. Our method sets the

  12. Toward the automated generation of genome-scale metabolic networks in the SEED

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Gould John

    2007-04-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background Current methods for the automated generation of genome-scale metabolic networks focus on genome annotation and preliminary biochemical reaction network assembly, but do not adequately address the process of identifying and filling gaps in the reaction network, and verifying that the network is suitable for systems level analysis. Thus, current methods are only sufficient for generating draft-quality networks, and refinement of the reaction network is still largely a manual, labor-intensive process. Results We have developed a method for generating genome-scale metabolic networks that produces substantially complete reaction networks, suitable for systems level analysis. Our method partitions the reaction space of central and intermediary metabolism into discrete, interconnected components that can be assembled and verified in isolation from each other, and then integrated and verified at the level of their interconnectivity. We have developed a database of components that are common across organisms, and have created tools for automatically assembling appropriate components for a particular organism based on the metabolic pathways encoded in the organism's genome. This focuses manual efforts on that portion of an organism's metabolism that is not yet represented in the database. We have demonstrated the efficacy of our method by reverse-engineering and automatically regenerating the reaction network from a published genome-scale metabolic model for Staphylococcus aureus. Additionally, we have verified that our method capitalizes on the database of common reaction network components created for S. aureus, by using these components to generate substantially complete reconstructions of the reaction networks from three other published metabolic models (Escherichia coli, Helicobacter pylori, and Lactococcus lactis. We have implemented our tools and database within the SEED, an open-source software environment for comparative

  13. Neutral theory of chemical reaction networks

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Lee, Sang Hoon; Holme, Petter; Minnhagen, Petter; Bernhardsson, Sebastian; Kim, Beom Jun

    2012-01-01

    To what extent do the characteristic features of a chemical reaction network reflect its purpose and function? In general, one argues that correlations between specific features and specific functions are key to understanding a complex structure. However, specific features may sometimes be neutral and uncorrelated with any system-specific purpose, function or causal chain. Such neutral features are caused by chance and randomness. Here we compare two classes of chemical networks: one that has been subjected to biological evolution (the chemical reaction network of metabolism in living cells) and one that has not (the atmospheric planetary chemical reaction networks). Their degree distributions are shown to share the very same neutral system-independent features. The shape of the broad distributions is to a large extent controlled by a single parameter, the network size. From this perspective, there is little difference between atmospheric and metabolic networks; they are just different sizes of the same random assembling network. In other words, the shape of the degree distribution is a neutral characteristic feature and has no functional or evolutionary implications in itself; it is not a matter of life and death. (paper)

  14. A Bayesian approach to the evolution of metabolic networks on a phylogeny.

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    Aziz Mithani

    2010-08-01

    Full Text Available The availability of genomes of many closely related bacteria with diverse metabolic capabilities offers the possibility of tracing metabolic evolution on a phylogeny relating the genomes to understand the evolutionary processes and constraints that affect the evolution of metabolic networks. Using simple (independent loss/gain of reactions or complex (incorporating dependencies among reactions stochastic models of metabolic evolution, it is possible to study how metabolic networks evolve over time. Here, we describe a model that takes the reaction neighborhood into account when modeling metabolic evolution. The model also allows estimation of the strength of the neighborhood effect during the course of evolution. We present Gibbs samplers for sampling networks at the internal node of a phylogeny and for estimating the parameters of evolution over a phylogeny without exploring the whole search space by iteratively sampling from the conditional distributions of the internal networks and parameters. The samplers are used to estimate the parameters of evolution of metabolic networks of bacteria in the genus Pseudomonas and to infer the metabolic networks of the ancestral pseudomonads. The results suggest that pathway maps that are conserved across the Pseudomonas phylogeny have a stronger neighborhood structure than those which have a variable distribution of reactions across the phylogeny, and that some Pseudomonas lineages are going through genome reduction resulting in the loss of a number of reactions from their metabolic networks.

  15. Predicting metabolic pathways by sub-network extraction.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Faust, Karoline; van Helden, Jacques

    2012-01-01

    Various methods result in groups of functionally related genes obtained from genomes (operons, regulons, syntheny groups, and phylogenetic profiles), transcriptomes (co-expression groups) and proteomes (modules of interacting proteins). When such groups contain two or more enzyme-coding genes, graph analysis methods can be applied to extract a metabolic pathway that interconnects them. We describe here the way to use the Pathway extraction tool available on the NeAT Web server ( http://rsat.ulb.ac.be/neat/ ) to piece together the metabolic pathway from a group of associated, enzyme-coding genes. The tool identifies the reactions that can be catalyzed by the products of the query genes (seed reactions), and applies sub-graph extraction algorithms to extract from a metabolic network a sub-network that connects the seed reactions. This sub-network represents the predicted metabolic pathway. We describe here the pathway prediction process in a step-by-step way, give hints about the main parametric choices, and illustrate how this tool can be used to extract metabolic pathways from bacterial genomes, on the basis of two study cases: the isoleucine-valine operon in Escherichia coli and a predicted operon in Cupriavidus (Ralstonia) metallidurans.

  16. Framework for network modularization and Bayesian network analysis to investigate the perturbed metabolic network

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    Kim Hyun

    2011-12-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background Genome-scale metabolic network models have contributed to elucidating biological phenomena, and predicting gene targets to engineer for biotechnological applications. With their increasing importance, their precise network characterization has also been crucial for better understanding of the cellular physiology. Results We herein introduce a framework for network modularization and Bayesian network analysis (FMB to investigate organism’s metabolism under perturbation. FMB reveals direction of influences among metabolic modules, in which reactions with similar or positively correlated flux variation patterns are clustered, in response to specific perturbation using metabolic flux data. With metabolic flux data calculated by constraints-based flux analysis under both control and perturbation conditions, FMB, in essence, reveals the effects of specific perturbations on the biological system through network modularization and Bayesian network analysis at metabolic modular level. As a demonstration, this framework was applied to the genetically perturbed Escherichia coli metabolism, which is a lpdA gene knockout mutant, using its genome-scale metabolic network model. Conclusions After all, it provides alternative scenarios of metabolic flux distributions in response to the perturbation, which are complementary to the data obtained from conventionally available genome-wide high-throughput techniques or metabolic flux analysis.

  17. Framework for network modularization and Bayesian network analysis to investigate the perturbed metabolic network.

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    Kim, Hyun Uk; Kim, Tae Yong; Lee, Sang Yup

    2011-01-01

    Genome-scale metabolic network models have contributed to elucidating biological phenomena, and predicting gene targets to engineer for biotechnological applications. With their increasing importance, their precise network characterization has also been crucial for better understanding of the cellular physiology. We herein introduce a framework for network modularization and Bayesian network analysis (FMB) to investigate organism's metabolism under perturbation. FMB reveals direction of influences among metabolic modules, in which reactions with similar or positively correlated flux variation patterns are clustered, in response to specific perturbation using metabolic flux data. With metabolic flux data calculated by constraints-based flux analysis under both control and perturbation conditions, FMB, in essence, reveals the effects of specific perturbations on the biological system through network modularization and Bayesian network analysis at metabolic modular level. As a demonstration, this framework was applied to the genetically perturbed Escherichia coli metabolism, which is a lpdA gene knockout mutant, using its genome-scale metabolic network model. After all, it provides alternative scenarios of metabolic flux distributions in response to the perturbation, which are complementary to the data obtained from conventionally available genome-wide high-throughput techniques or metabolic flux analysis.

  18. Metabolite coupling in genome-scale metabolic networks

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    Palsson Bernhard Ø

    2006-03-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background Biochemically detailed stoichiometric matrices have now been reconstructed for various bacteria, yeast, and for the human cardiac mitochondrion based on genomic and proteomic data. These networks have been manually curated based on legacy data and elementally and charge balanced. Comparative analysis of these well curated networks is now possible. Pairs of metabolites often appear together in several network reactions, linking them topologically. This co-occurrence of pairs of metabolites in metabolic reactions is termed herein "metabolite coupling." These metabolite pairs can be directly computed from the stoichiometric matrix, S. Metabolite coupling is derived from the matrix ŜŜT, whose off-diagonal elements indicate the number of reactions in which any two metabolites participate together, where Ŝ is the binary form of S. Results Metabolite coupling in the studied networks was found to be dominated by a relatively small group of highly interacting pairs of metabolites. As would be expected, metabolites with high individual metabolite connectivity also tended to be those with the highest metabolite coupling, as the most connected metabolites couple more often. For metabolite pairs that are not highly coupled, we show that the number of reactions a pair of metabolites shares across a metabolic network closely approximates a line on a log-log scale. We also show that the preferential coupling of two metabolites with each other is spread across the spectrum of metabolites and is not unique to the most connected metabolites. We provide a measure for determining which metabolite pairs couple more often than would be expected based on their individual connectivity in the network and show that these metabolites often derive their principal biological functions from existing in pairs. Thus, analysis of metabolite coupling provides information beyond that which is found from studying the individual connectivity of individual

  19. Acorn: A grid computing system for constraint based modeling and visualization of the genome scale metabolic reaction networks via a web interface

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    Bushell Michael E

    2011-05-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background Constraint-based approaches facilitate the prediction of cellular metabolic capabilities, based, in turn on predictions of the repertoire of enzymes encoded in the genome. Recently, genome annotations have been used to reconstruct genome scale metabolic reaction networks for numerous species, including Homo sapiens, which allow simulations that provide valuable insights into topics, including predictions of gene essentiality of pathogens, interpretation of genetic polymorphism in metabolic disease syndromes and suggestions for novel approaches to microbial metabolic engineering. These constraint-based simulations are being integrated with the functional genomics portals, an activity that requires efficient implementation of the constraint-based simulations in the web-based environment. Results Here, we present Acorn, an open source (GNU GPL grid computing system for constraint-based simulations of genome scale metabolic reaction networks within an interactive web environment. The grid-based architecture allows efficient execution of computationally intensive, iterative protocols such as Flux Variability Analysis, which can be readily scaled up as the numbers of models (and users increase. The web interface uses AJAX, which facilitates efficient model browsing and other search functions, and intuitive implementation of appropriate simulation conditions. Research groups can install Acorn locally and create user accounts. Users can also import models in the familiar SBML format and link reaction formulas to major functional genomics portals of choice. Selected models and simulation results can be shared between different users and made publically available. Users can construct pathway map layouts and import them into the server using a desktop editor integrated within the system. Pathway maps are then used to visualise numerical results within the web environment. To illustrate these features we have deployed Acorn and created a

  20. Expanded flux variability analysis on metabolic network of Escherichia coli

    Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (English)

    CHEN Tong; XIE ZhengWei; OUYANG Qi

    2009-01-01

    Flux balance analysis,based on the mass conservation law in a cellular organism,has been extensively employed to study the interplay between structures and functions of cellular metabolic networks.Consequently,the phenotypes of the metabolism can be well elucidated.In this paper,we introduce the Expanded Flux Variability Analysis (EFVA) to characterize the intrinsic nature of metabolic reactions,such as flexibility,modularity and essentiality,by exploring the trend of the range,the maximum and the minimum flux of reactions.We took the metabolic network of Escherichia coli as an example and analyzed the variability of reaction fluxes under different growth rate constraints.The average variability of all reactions decreases dramatically when the growth rate increases.Consider the noise effect on the metabolic system,we thus argue that the microorganism may practically grow under a suboptimal state.Besides,under the EFVA framework,the reactions are easily to be grouped into catabolic and anabolic groups.And the anabolic groups can be further assigned to specific biomass constitute.We also discovered the growth rate dependent essentiality of reactions.

  1. Thermodynamic analysis of regulation in metabolic networks using constraint-based modeling

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    Mahadevan Radhakrishnan

    2010-05-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background Geobacter sulfurreducens is a member of the Geobacter species, which are capable of oxidation of organic waste coupled to the reduction of heavy metals and electrode with applications in bioremediation and bioenergy generation. While the metabolism of this organism has been studied through the development of a stoichiometry based genome-scale metabolic model, the associated regulatory network has not yet been well studied. In this manuscript, we report on the implementation of a thermodynamics based metabolic flux model for Geobacter sulfurreducens. We use this updated model to identify reactions that are subject to regulatory control in the metabolic network of G. sulfurreducens using thermodynamic variability analysis. Findings As a first step, we have validated the regulatory sites and bottleneck reactions predicted by the thermodynamic flux analysis in E. coli by evaluating the expression ranges of the corresponding genes. We then identified ten reactions in the metabolic network of G. sulfurreducens that are predicted to be candidates for regulation. We then compared the free energy ranges for these reactions with the corresponding gene expression fold changes under conditions of different environmental and genetic perturbations and show that the model predictions of regulation are consistent with data. In addition, we also identify reactions that operate close to equilibrium and show that the experimentally determined exchange coefficient (a measure of reversibility is significant for these reactions. Conclusions Application of the thermodynamic constraints resulted in identification of potential bottleneck reactions not only from the central metabolism but also from the nucleotide and amino acid subsystems, thereby showing the highly coupled nature of the thermodynamic constraints. In addition, thermodynamic variability analysis serves as a valuable tool in estimating the ranges of ΔrG' of every reaction in the model

  2. Atmospheric reaction systems as null-models to identify structural traces of evolution in metabolism.

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    Petter Holme

    Full Text Available The metabolism is the motor behind the biological complexity of an organism. One problem of characterizing its large-scale structure is that it is hard to know what to compare it to. All chemical reaction systems are shaped by the same physics that gives molecules their stability and affinity to react. These fundamental factors cannot be captured by standard null-models based on randomization. The unique property of organismal metabolism is that it is controlled, to some extent, by an enzymatic machinery that is subject to evolution. In this paper, we explore the possibility that reaction systems of planetary atmospheres can serve as a null-model against which we can define metabolic structure and trace the influence of evolution. We find that the two types of data can be distinguished by their respective degree distributions. This is especially clear when looking at the degree distribution of the reaction network (of reaction connected to each other if they involve the same molecular species. For the Earth's atmospheric network and the human metabolic network, we look into more detail for an underlying explanation of this deviation. However, we cannot pinpoint a single cause of the difference, rather there are several concurrent factors. By examining quantities relating to the modular-functional organization of the metabolism, we confirm that metabolic networks have a more complex modular organization than the atmospheric networks, but not much more. We interpret the more variegated modular arrangement of metabolism as a trace of evolved functionality. On the other hand, it is quite remarkable how similar the structures of these two types of networks are, which emphasizes that the constraints from the chemical properties of the molecules has a larger influence in shaping the reaction system than does natural selection.

  3. Blueprint for antimicrobial hit discovery targeting metabolic networks.

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    Shen, Y; Liu, J; Estiu, G; Isin, B; Ahn, Y-Y; Lee, D-S; Barabási, A-L; Kapatral, V; Wiest, O; Oltvai, Z N

    2010-01-19

    Advances in genome analysis, network biology, and computational chemistry have the potential to revolutionize drug discovery by combining system-level identification of drug targets with the atomistic modeling of small molecules capable of modulating their activity. To demonstrate the effectiveness of such a discovery pipeline, we deduced common antibiotic targets in Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus by identifying shared tissue-specific or uniformly essential metabolic reactions in their metabolic networks. We then predicted through virtual screening dozens of potential inhibitors for several enzymes of these reactions and showed experimentally that a subset of these inhibited both enzyme activities in vitro and bacterial cell viability. This blueprint is applicable for any sequenced organism with high-quality metabolic reconstruction and suggests a general strategy for strain-specific antiinfective therapy.

  4. Dead end metabolites--defining the known unknowns of the E. coli metabolic network.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Amanda Mackie

    Full Text Available The EcoCyc database is an online scientific database which provides an integrated view of the metabolic and regulatory network of the bacterium Escherichia coli K-12 and facilitates computational exploration of this important model organism. We have analysed the occurrence of dead end metabolites within the database--these are metabolites which lack the requisite reactions (either metabolic or transport that would account for their production or consumption within the metabolic network. 127 dead end metabolites were identified from the 995 compounds that are contained within the EcoCyc metabolic network. Their presence reflects either a deficit in our representation of the network or in our knowledge of E. coli metabolism. Extensive literature searches resulted in the addition of 38 transport reactions and 3 metabolic reactions to the database and led to an improved representation of the pathway for Vitamin B12 salvage. 39 dead end metabolites were identified as components of reactions that are not physiologically relevant to E. coli K-12--these reactions are properties of purified enzymes in vitro that would not be expected to occur in vivo. Our analysis led to improvements in the software that underpins the database and to the program that finds dead end metabolites within EcoCyc. The remaining dead end metabolites in the EcoCyc database likely represent deficiencies in our knowledge of E. coli metabolism.

  5. Horizontal and vertical growth of S. cerevisiae metabolic network.

    KAUST Repository

    Grassi, Luigi

    2011-10-14

    BACKGROUND: The growth and development of a biological organism is reflected by its metabolic network, the evolution of which relies on the essential gene duplication mechanism. There are two current views about the evolution of metabolic networks. The retrograde model hypothesizes that a pathway evolves by recruiting novel enzymes in a direction opposite to the metabolic flow. The patchwork model is instead based on the assumption that the evolution is based on the exploitation of broad-specificity enzymes capable of catalysing a variety of metabolic reactions. RESULTS: We analysed a well-studied unicellular eukaryotic organism, S. cerevisiae, and studied the effect of the removal of paralogous gene products on its metabolic network. Our results, obtained using different paralog and network definitions, show that, after an initial period when gene duplication was indeed instrumental in expanding the metabolic space, the latter reached an equilibrium and subsequent gene duplications were used as a source of more specialized enzymes rather than as a source of novel reactions. We also show that the switch between the two evolutionary strategies in S. cerevisiae can be dated to about 350 million years ago. CONCLUSIONS: Our data, obtained through a novel analysis methodology, strongly supports the hypothesis that the patchwork model better explains the more recent evolution of the S. cerevisiae metabolic network. Interestingly, the effects of a patchwork strategy acting before the Euascomycete-Hemiascomycete divergence are still detectable today.

  6. Multi-equilibrium property of metabolic networks: SSI module

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Chen Luonan

    2011-06-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background Revealing the multi-equilibrium property of a metabolic network is a fundamental and important topic in systems biology. Due to the complexity of the metabolic network, it is generally a difficult task to study the problem as a whole from both analytical and numerical viewpoint. On the other hand, the structure-oriented modularization idea is a good choice to overcome such a difficulty, i.e. decomposing the network into several basic building blocks and then studying the whole network through investigating the dynamical characteristics of the basic building blocks and their interactions. Single substrate and single product with inhibition (SSI metabolic module is one type of the basic building blocks of metabolic networks, and its multi-equilibrium property has important influence on that of the whole metabolic networks. Results In this paper, we describe what the SSI metabolic module is, characterize the rates of the metabolic reactions by Hill kinetics and give a unified model for SSI modules by using a set of nonlinear ordinary differential equations with multi-variables. Specifically, a sufficient and necessary condition is first given to describe the injectivity of a class of nonlinear systems, and then, the sufficient condition is used to study the multi-equilibrium property of SSI modules. As a main theoretical result, for the SSI modules in which each reaction has no more than one inhibitor, a sufficient condition is derived to rule out multiple equilibria, i.e. the Jacobian matrix of its rate function is nonsingular everywhere. Conclusions In summary, we describe SSI modules and give a general modeling framework based on Hill kinetics, and provide a sufficient condition for ruling out multiple equilibria of a key type of SSI module.

  7. Second Law of Thermodynamics Applied to Metabolic Networks

    Science.gov (United States)

    Nigam, R.; Liang, S.

    2003-01-01

    We present a simple algorithm based on linear programming, that combines Kirchoff's flux and potential laws and applies them to metabolic networks to predict thermodynamically feasible reaction fluxes. These law's represent mass conservation and energy feasibility that are widely used in electrical circuit analysis. Formulating the Kirchoff's potential law around a reaction loop in terms of the null space of the stoichiometric matrix leads to a simple representation of the law of entropy that can be readily incorporated into the traditional flux balance analysis without resorting to non-linear optimization. Our technique is new as it can easily check the fluxes got by applying flux balance analysis for thermodynamic feasibility and modify them if they are infeasible so that they satisfy the law of entropy. We illustrate our method by applying it to the network dealing with the central metabolism of Escherichia coli. Due to its simplicity this algorithm will be useful in studying large scale complex metabolic networks in the cell of different organisms.

  8. Gap-filling analysis of the iJO1366 Escherichia coli metabolic network reconstruction for discovery of metabolic functions

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Orth Jeffrey D

    2012-05-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background The iJO1366 reconstruction of the metabolic network of Escherichia coli is one of the most complete and accurate metabolic reconstructions available for any organism. Still, because our knowledge of even well-studied model organisms such as this one is incomplete, this network reconstruction contains gaps and possible errors. There are a total of 208 blocked metabolites in iJO1366, representing gaps in the network. Results A new model improvement workflow was developed to compare model based phenotypic predictions to experimental data to fill gaps and correct errors. A Keio Collection based dataset of E. coli gene essentiality was obtained from literature data and compared to model predictions. The SMILEY algorithm was then used to predict the most likely missing reactions in the reconstructed network, adding reactions from a KEGG based universal set of metabolic reactions. The feasibility of these putative reactions was determined by comparing updated versions of the model to the experimental dataset, and genes were predicted for the most feasible reactions. Conclusions Numerous improvements to the iJO1366 metabolic reconstruction were suggested by these analyses. Experiments were performed to verify several computational predictions, including a new mechanism for growth on myo-inositol. The other predictions made in this study should be experimentally verifiable by similar means. Validating all of the predictions made here represents a substantial but important undertaking.

  9. Genome-scale reconstruction of the Saccharomyces cerevisiae metabolic network

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Förster, Jochen; Famili, I.; Fu, P.

    2003-01-01

    The metabolic network in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae was reconstructed using currently available genomic, biochemical, and physiological information. The metabolic reactions were compartmentalized between the cytosol and the mitochondria, and transport steps between the compartments...

  10. Signatures of arithmetic simplicity in metabolic network architecture.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    William J Riehl

    2010-04-01

    Full Text Available Metabolic networks perform some of the most fundamental functions in living cells, including energy transduction and building block biosynthesis. While these are the best characterized networks in living systems, understanding their evolutionary history and complex wiring constitutes one of the most fascinating open questions in biology, intimately related to the enigma of life's origin itself. Is the evolution of metabolism subject to general principles, beyond the unpredictable accumulation of multiple historical accidents? Here we search for such principles by applying to an artificial chemical universe some of the methodologies developed for the study of genome scale models of cellular metabolism. In particular, we use metabolic flux constraint-based models to exhaustively search for artificial chemistry pathways that can optimally perform an array of elementary metabolic functions. Despite the simplicity of the model employed, we find that the ensuing pathways display a surprisingly rich set of properties, including the existence of autocatalytic cycles and hierarchical modules, the appearance of universally preferable metabolites and reactions, and a logarithmic trend of pathway length as a function of input/output molecule size. Some of these properties can be derived analytically, borrowing methods previously used in cryptography. In addition, by mapping biochemical networks onto a simplified carbon atom reaction backbone, we find that properties similar to those predicted for the artificial chemistry hold also for real metabolic networks. These findings suggest that optimality principles and arithmetic simplicity might lie beneath some aspects of biochemical complexity.

  11. Network-level architecture and the evolutionary potential of underground metabolism.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Notebaart, Richard A; Szappanos, Balázs; Kintses, Bálint; Pál, Ferenc; Györkei, Ádám; Bogos, Balázs; Lázár, Viktória; Spohn, Réka; Csörgő, Bálint; Wagner, Allon; Ruppin, Eytan; Pál, Csaba; Papp, Balázs

    2014-08-12

    A central unresolved issue in evolutionary biology is how metabolic innovations emerge. Low-level enzymatic side activities are frequent and can potentially be recruited for new biochemical functions. However, the role of such underground reactions in adaptation toward novel environments has remained largely unknown and out of reach of computational predictions, not least because these issues demand analyses at the level of the entire metabolic network. Here, we provide a comprehensive computational model of the underground metabolism in Escherichia coli. Most underground reactions are not isolated and 45% of them can be fully wired into the existing network and form novel pathways that produce key precursors for cell growth. This observation allowed us to conduct an integrated genome-wide in silico and experimental survey to characterize the evolutionary potential of E. coli to adapt to hundreds of nutrient conditions. We revealed that underground reactions allow growth in new environments when their activity is increased. We estimate that at least ∼20% of the underground reactions that can be connected to the existing network confer a fitness advantage under specific environments. Moreover, our results demonstrate that the genetic basis of evolutionary adaptations via underground metabolism is computationally predictable. The approach used here has potential for various application areas from bioengineering to medical genetics.

  12. Thermodynamics-based Metabolite Sensitivity Analysis in metabolic networks.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kiparissides, A; Hatzimanikatis, V

    2017-01-01

    The increasing availability of large metabolomics datasets enhances the need for computational methodologies that can organize the data in a way that can lead to the inference of meaningful relationships. Knowledge of the metabolic state of a cell and how it responds to various stimuli and extracellular conditions can offer significant insight in the regulatory functions and how to manipulate them. Constraint based methods, such as Flux Balance Analysis (FBA) and Thermodynamics-based flux analysis (TFA), are commonly used to estimate the flow of metabolites through genome-wide metabolic networks, making it possible to identify the ranges of flux values that are consistent with the studied physiological and thermodynamic conditions. However, unless key intracellular fluxes and metabolite concentrations are known, constraint-based models lead to underdetermined problem formulations. This lack of information propagates as uncertainty in the estimation of fluxes and basic reaction properties such as the determination of reaction directionalities. Therefore, knowledge of which metabolites, if measured, would contribute the most to reducing this uncertainty can significantly improve our ability to define the internal state of the cell. In the present work we combine constraint based modeling, Design of Experiments (DoE) and Global Sensitivity Analysis (GSA) into the Thermodynamics-based Metabolite Sensitivity Analysis (TMSA) method. TMSA ranks metabolites comprising a metabolic network based on their ability to constrain the gamut of possible solutions to a limited, thermodynamically consistent set of internal states. TMSA is modular and can be applied to a single reaction, a metabolic pathway or an entire metabolic network. This is, to our knowledge, the first attempt to use metabolic modeling in order to provide a significance ranking of metabolites to guide experimental measurements. Copyright © 2016 International Metabolic Engineering Society. Published by Elsevier

  13. Does habitat variability really promote metabolic network modularity?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Takemoto, Kazuhiro

    2013-01-01

    The hypothesis that variability in natural habitats promotes modular organization is widely accepted for cellular networks. However, results of some data analyses and theoretical studies have begun to cast doubt on the impact of habitat variability on modularity in metabolic networks. Therefore, we re-evaluated this hypothesis using statistical data analysis and current metabolic information. We were unable to conclude that an increase in modularity was the result of habitat variability. Although horizontal gene transfer was also considered because it may contribute for survival in a variety of environments, closely related to habitat variability, and is known to be positively correlated with network modularity, such a positive correlation was not concluded in the latest version of metabolic networks. Furthermore, we demonstrated that the previously observed increase in network modularity due to habitat variability and horizontal gene transfer was probably due to a lack of available data on metabolic reactions. Instead, we determined that modularity in metabolic networks is dependent on species growth conditions. These results may not entirely discount the impact of habitat variability and horizontal gene transfer. Rather, they highlight the need for a more suitable definition of habitat variability and a more careful examination of relationships of the network modularity with horizontal gene transfer, habitats, and environments.

  14. MetaFluxNet: the management of metabolic reaction information and quantitative metabolic flux analysis.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lee, Dong-Yup; Yun, Hongsoek; Park, Sunwon; Lee, Sang Yup

    2003-11-01

    MetaFluxNet is a program package for managing information on the metabolic reaction network and for quantitatively analyzing metabolic fluxes in an interactive and customized way. It allows users to interpret and examine metabolic behavior in response to genetic and/or environmental modifications. As a result, quantitative in silico simulations of metabolic pathways can be carried out to understand the metabolic status and to design the metabolic engineering strategies. The main features of the program include a well-developed model construction environment, user-friendly interface for metabolic flux analysis (MFA), comparative MFA of strains having different genotypes under various environmental conditions, and automated pathway layout creation. http://mbel.kaist.ac.kr/ A manual for MetaFluxNet is available as PDF file.

  15. Sirtuins as regulators of the yeast metabolic network

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Markus eRalser

    2012-03-01

    Full Text Available There is growing evidence that the metabolic network is an integral regulator of cellularphysiology. Dynamic changes in metabolite concentrations, metabolic flux, or networktopology act as reporters of biological or environmental signals, and are required for the cellto trigger an appropriate biological reaction. Changes in the metabolic network are recognizedby specific sensory macromolecules and translated into a transcriptional or translationalresponse. The protein family of sirtuins, discovered more than 30 years ago as regulators ofsilent chromatin, seems to fulfill the role of a metabolic sensor during aging and conditions ofcaloric restriction. NAD+/NADH interconverting metabolic enzymes glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase and alcohol dehydrogenase, as well as enzymes involved inNAD(H, synthesis provide or deprive NAD+ in close proximity to Sir2. This influence sirtuinactivity, and facilitates a dynamic response of the metabolic network to changes inmetabolism with effects on physiology and aging. The molecular network downstream Sir2,however, is complex. In just two orders, Sir2’s metabolism-related interactions span half ofthe yeast proteome, and are connected with virtually every physiological process. Thus,although it is fundamental to analyze single molecular mechanisms, it is at the same timecrucial to consider this genome-scale complexity when correlating single molecular eventswith phenotypes such as aging, cell growth, or stress resistance.

  16. Network Thermodynamic Curation of Human and Yeast Genome-Scale Metabolic Models

    Science.gov (United States)

    Martínez, Verónica S.; Quek, Lake-Ee; Nielsen, Lars K.

    2014-01-01

    Genome-scale models are used for an ever-widening range of applications. Although there has been much focus on specifying the stoichiometric matrix, the predictive power of genome-scale models equally depends on reaction directions. Two-thirds of reactions in the two eukaryotic reconstructions Homo sapiens Recon 1 and Yeast 5 are specified as irreversible. However, these specifications are mainly based on biochemical textbooks or on their similarity to other organisms and are rarely underpinned by detailed thermodynamic analysis. In this study, a to our knowledge new workflow combining network-embedded thermodynamic and flux variability analysis was used to evaluate existing irreversibility constraints in Recon 1 and Yeast 5 and to identify new ones. A total of 27 and 16 new irreversible reactions were identified in Recon 1 and Yeast 5, respectively, whereas only four reactions were found with directions incorrectly specified against thermodynamics (three in Yeast 5 and one in Recon 1). The workflow further identified for both models several isolated internal loops that require further curation. The framework also highlighted the need for substrate channeling (in human) and ATP hydrolysis (in yeast) for the essential reaction catalyzed by phosphoribosylaminoimidazole carboxylase in purine metabolism. Finally, the framework highlighted differences in proline metabolism between yeast (cytosolic anabolism and mitochondrial catabolism) and humans (exclusively mitochondrial metabolism). We conclude that network-embedded thermodynamics facilitates the specification and validation of irreversibility constraints in compartmentalized metabolic models, at the same time providing further insight into network properties. PMID:25028891

  17. Genome-Scale Reconstruction of the Human Astrocyte Metabolic Network

    OpenAIRE

    Mart?n-Jim?nez, Cynthia A.; Salazar-Barreto, Diego; Barreto, George E.; Gonz?lez, Janneth

    2017-01-01

    Astrocytes are the most abundant cells of the central nervous system; they have a predominant role in maintaining brain metabolism. In this sense, abnormal metabolic states have been found in different neuropathological diseases. Determination of metabolic states of astrocytes is difficult to model using current experimental approaches given the high number of reactions and metabolites present. Thus, genome-scale metabolic networks derived from transcriptomic data can be used as a framework t...

  18. Exploring photosynthesis evolution by comparative analysis of metabolic networks between chloroplasts and photosynthetic bacteria

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Hou Jing

    2006-04-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background Chloroplasts descended from cyanobacteria and have a drastically reduced genome following an endosymbiotic event. Many genes of the ancestral cyanobacterial genome have been transferred to the plant nuclear genome by horizontal gene transfer. However, a selective set of metabolism pathways is maintained in chloroplasts using both chloroplast genome encoded and nuclear genome encoded enzymes. As an organelle specialized for carrying out photosynthesis, does the chloroplast metabolic network have properties adapted for higher efficiency of photosynthesis? We compared metabolic network properties of chloroplasts and prokaryotic photosynthetic organisms, mostly cyanobacteria, based on metabolic maps derived from genome data to identify features of chloroplast network properties that are different from cyanobacteria and to analyze possible functional significance of those features. Results The properties of the entire metabolic network and the sub-network that consists of reactions directly connected to the Calvin Cycle have been analyzed using hypergraph representation. Results showed that the whole metabolic networks in chloroplast and cyanobacteria both possess small-world network properties. Although the number of compounds and reactions in chloroplasts is less than that in cyanobacteria, the chloroplast's metabolic network has longer average path length, a larger diameter, and is Calvin Cycle -centered, indicating an overall less-dense network structure with specific and local high density areas in chloroplasts. Moreover, chloroplast metabolic network exhibits a better modular organization than cyanobacterial ones. Enzymes involved in the same metabolic processes tend to cluster into the same module in chloroplasts. Conclusion In summary, the differences in metabolic network properties may reflect the evolutionary changes during endosymbiosis that led to the improvement of the photosynthesis efficiency in higher plants. Our

  19. Mimoza: web-based semantic zooming and navigation in metabolic networks.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zhukova, Anna; Sherman, David J

    2015-02-26

    The complexity of genome-scale metabolic models makes them quite difficult for human users to read, since they contain thousands of reactions that must be included for accurate computer simulation. Interestingly, hidden similarities between groups of reactions can be discovered, and generalized to reveal higher-level patterns. The web-based navigation system Mimoza allows a human expert to explore metabolic network models in a semantically zoomable manner: The most general view represents the compartments of the model; the next view shows the generalized versions of reactions and metabolites in each compartment; and the most detailed view represents the initial network with the generalization-based layout (where similar metabolites and reactions are placed next to each other). It allows a human expert to grasp the general structure of the network and analyze it in a top-down manner Mimoza can be installed standalone, or used on-line at http://mimoza.bordeaux.inria.fr/ , or installed in a Galaxy server for use in workflows. Mimoza views can be embedded in web pages, or downloaded as COMBINE archives.

  20. Comparative evaluation of atom mapping algorithms for balanced metabolic reactions: application to Recon 3D.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Preciat Gonzalez, German A; El Assal, Lemmer R P; Noronha, Alberto; Thiele, Ines; Haraldsdóttir, Hulda S; Fleming, Ronan M T

    2017-06-14

    The mechanism of each chemical reaction in a metabolic network can be represented as a set of atom mappings, each of which relates an atom in a substrate metabolite to an atom of the same element in a product metabolite. Genome-scale metabolic network reconstructions typically represent biochemistry at the level of reaction stoichiometry. However, a more detailed representation at the underlying level of atom mappings opens the possibility for a broader range of biological, biomedical and biotechnological applications than with stoichiometry alone. Complete manual acquisition of atom mapping data for a genome-scale metabolic network is a laborious process. However, many algorithms exist to predict atom mappings. How do their predictions compare to each other and to manually curated atom mappings? For more than four thousand metabolic reactions in the latest human metabolic reconstruction, Recon 3D, we compared the atom mappings predicted by six atom mapping algorithms. We also compared these predictions to those obtained by manual curation of atom mappings for over five hundred reactions distributed among all top level Enzyme Commission number classes. Five of the evaluated algorithms had similarly high prediction accuracy of over 91% when compared to manually curated atom mapped reactions. On average, the accuracy of the prediction was highest for reactions catalysed by oxidoreductases and lowest for reactions catalysed by ligases. In addition to prediction accuracy, the algorithms were evaluated on their accessibility, their advanced features, such as the ability to identify equivalent atoms, and their ability to map hydrogen atoms. In addition to prediction accuracy, we found that software accessibility and advanced features were fundamental to the selection of an atom mapping algorithm in practice.

  1. ReacKnock: identifying reaction deletion strategies for microbial strain optimization based on genome-scale metabolic network.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Zixiang Xu

    Full Text Available Gene knockout has been used as a common strategy to improve microbial strains for producing chemicals. Several algorithms are available to predict the target reactions to be deleted. Most of them apply mixed integer bi-level linear programming (MIBLP based on metabolic networks, and use duality theory to transform bi-level optimization problem of large-scale MIBLP to single-level programming. However, the validity of the transformation was not proved. Solution of MIBLP depends on the structure of inner problem. If the inner problem is continuous, Karush-Kuhn-Tucker (KKT method can be used to reformulate the MIBLP to a single-level one. We adopt KKT technique in our algorithm ReacKnock to attack the intractable problem of the solution of MIBLP, demonstrated with the genome-scale metabolic network model of E. coli for producing various chemicals such as succinate, ethanol, threonine and etc. Compared to the previous methods, our algorithm is fast, stable and reliable to find the optimal solutions for all the chemical products tested, and able to provide all the alternative deletion strategies which lead to the same industrial objective.

  2. A mixed-integer linear programming approach to the reduction of genome-scale metabolic networks.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Röhl, Annika; Bockmayr, Alexander

    2017-01-03

    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. Here we present an MILP approach for computing minimum subnetworks with the given properties. The minimality (with respect to the number of active reactions) is not guaranteed by NetworkReducer, while the method by Burgard et al. does not allow specifying the different biological requirements. Our procedure is about 5-10 times faster than NetworkReducer and can enumerate all minimum subnetworks in case there exist several ones. This allows identifying common reactions that are present in all subnetworks, and reactions appearing in alternative pathways. Applying complex analysis methods to genome-scale metabolic networks is often not possible in practice. Thus it may become necessary to reduce the size of the network while keeping important functionalities. We propose a MILP solution to this problem. Compared to previous work, our approach is more efficient and allows computing not only one, but even all minimum subnetworks satisfying the required properties.

  3. Network thermodynamic curation of human and yeast genome-scale metabolic models.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Martínez, Verónica S; Quek, Lake-Ee; Nielsen, Lars K

    2014-07-15

    Genome-scale models are used for an ever-widening range of applications. Although there has been much focus on specifying the stoichiometric matrix, the predictive power of genome-scale models equally depends on reaction directions. Two-thirds of reactions in the two eukaryotic reconstructions Homo sapiens Recon 1 and Yeast 5 are specified as irreversible. However, these specifications are mainly based on biochemical textbooks or on their similarity to other organisms and are rarely underpinned by detailed thermodynamic analysis. In this study, a to our knowledge new workflow combining network-embedded thermodynamic and flux variability analysis was used to evaluate existing irreversibility constraints in Recon 1 and Yeast 5 and to identify new ones. A total of 27 and 16 new irreversible reactions were identified in Recon 1 and Yeast 5, respectively, whereas only four reactions were found with directions incorrectly specified against thermodynamics (three in Yeast 5 and one in Recon 1). The workflow further identified for both models several isolated internal loops that require further curation. The framework also highlighted the need for substrate channeling (in human) and ATP hydrolysis (in yeast) for the essential reaction catalyzed by phosphoribosylaminoimidazole carboxylase in purine metabolism. Finally, the framework highlighted differences in proline metabolism between yeast (cytosolic anabolism and mitochondrial catabolism) and humans (exclusively mitochondrial metabolism). We conclude that network-embedded thermodynamics facilitates the specification and validation of irreversibility constraints in compartmentalized metabolic models, at the same time providing further insight into network properties. Copyright © 2014 Biophysical Society. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  4. Mathematical Modeling and Dynamic Simulation of Metabolic Reaction Systems Using Metabolome Time Series Data

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Kansuporn eSriyudthsak

    2016-05-01

    Full Text Available The high-throughput acquisition of metabolome data is greatly anticipated for the complete understanding of cellular metabolism in living organisms. A variety of analytical technologies have been developed to acquire large-scale metabolic profiles under different biological or environmental conditions. Time series data are useful for predicting the most likely metabolic pathways because they provide important information regarding the accumulation of metabolites, which implies causal relationships in the metabolic reaction network. Considerable effort has been undertaken to utilize these data for constructing a mathematical model merging system properties and quantitatively characterizing a whole metabolic system in toto. However, there are technical difficulties between benchmarking the provision and utilization of data. Although hundreds of metabolites can be measured, which provide information on the metabolic reaction system, simultaneous measurement of thousands of metabolites is still challenging. In addition, it is nontrivial to logically predict the dynamic behaviors of unmeasurable metabolite concentrations without sufficient information on the metabolic reaction network. Yet, consolidating the advantages of advancements in both metabolomics and mathematical modeling remain to be accomplished. This review outlines the conceptual basis of and recent advances in technologies in both the research fields. It also highlights the potential for constructing a large-scale mathematical model by estimating model parameters from time series metabolome data in order to comprehensively understand metabolism at the systems level.

  5. Mathematical Modeling and Dynamic Simulation of Metabolic Reaction Systems Using Metabolome Time Series Data.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sriyudthsak, Kansuporn; Shiraishi, Fumihide; Hirai, Masami Yokota

    2016-01-01

    The high-throughput acquisition of metabolome data is greatly anticipated for the complete understanding of cellular metabolism in living organisms. A variety of analytical technologies have been developed to acquire large-scale metabolic profiles under different biological or environmental conditions. Time series data are useful for predicting the most likely metabolic pathways because they provide important information regarding the accumulation of metabolites, which implies causal relationships in the metabolic reaction network. Considerable effort has been undertaken to utilize these data for constructing a mathematical model merging system properties and quantitatively characterizing a whole metabolic system in toto. However, there are technical difficulties between benchmarking the provision and utilization of data. Although, hundreds of metabolites can be measured, which provide information on the metabolic reaction system, simultaneous measurement of thousands of metabolites is still challenging. In addition, it is nontrivial to logically predict the dynamic behaviors of unmeasurable metabolite concentrations without sufficient information on the metabolic reaction network. Yet, consolidating the advantages of advancements in both metabolomics and mathematical modeling remain to be accomplished. This review outlines the conceptual basis of and recent advances in technologies in both the research fields. It also highlights the potential for constructing a large-scale mathematical model by estimating model parameters from time series metabolome data in order to comprehensively understand metabolism at the systems level.

  6. Structuring evolution: biochemical networks and metabolic diversification in birds.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Morrison, Erin S; Badyaev, Alexander V

    2016-08-25

    Recurrence and predictability of evolution are thought to reflect the correspondence between genomic and phenotypic dimensions of organisms, and the connectivity in deterministic networks within these dimensions. Direct examination of the correspondence between opportunities for diversification imbedded in such networks and realized diversity is illuminating, but is empirically challenging because both the deterministic networks and phenotypic diversity are modified in the course of evolution. Here we overcome this problem by directly comparing the structure of a "global" carotenoid network - comprising of all known enzymatic reactions among naturally occurring carotenoids - with the patterns of evolutionary diversification in carotenoid-producing metabolic networks utilized by birds. We found that phenotypic diversification in carotenoid networks across 250 species was closely associated with enzymatic connectivity of the underlying biochemical network - compounds with greater connectivity occurred the most frequently across species and were the hotspots of metabolic pathway diversification. In contrast, we found no evidence for diversification along the metabolic pathways, corroborating findings that the utilization of the global carotenoid network was not strongly influenced by history in avian evolution. The finding that the diversification in species-specific carotenoid networks is qualitatively predictable from the connectivity of the underlying enzymatic network points to significant structural determinism in phenotypic evolution.

  7. Validation of a metabolic network for Saccharomyces cerevisiae using mixed substrate studies.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Vanrolleghem, P A; de Jong-Gubbels, P; van Gulik, W M; Pronk, J T; van Dijken, J P; Heijnen, S

    1996-01-01

    Setting up a metabolic network model for respiratory growth of Saccharomyces cerevisiae requires the estimation of only two (energetic) stoichiometric parameters: (1) the operational PO ratio and (2) a growth-related maintenance factor k. It is shown, both theoretically and practically, how chemostat cultivations with different mixtures of two substrates allow unique values to be given to these unknowns of the proposed metabolic model. For the yeast and model considered, an effective PO ratio of 1.09 mol of ATP/mol of O (95% confidence interval 1.07-1.11) and a k factor of 0.415 mol of ATP/C-mol of biomass (0.385-0.445) were obtained from biomass substrate yield data on glucose/ethanol mixtures. Symbolic manipulation software proved very valuable in this study as it supported the proof of theoretical identifiability and significantly reduced the necessary computations for parameter estimation. In the transition from 100% glucose to 100% ethanol in the feed, four metabolic regimes occur. Switching between these regimes is determined by cessation of an irreversible reaction and initiation of an alternative reaction. Metabolic network predictions of these metabolic switches compared well with activity measurements of key enzymes. As a second validation of the network, the biomass yield of S. cerevisiae on acetate was also compared to the network prediction. An excellent agreement was found for a network in which acetate transport was modeled with a proton symport, while passive diffusion of acetate gave significantly higher yield predictions.

  8. Construction and analysis of a genome-scale metabolic network for Bacillus licheniformis WX-02.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Guo, Jing; Zhang, Hong; Wang, Cheng; Chang, Ji-Wei; Chen, Ling-Ling

    2016-05-01

    We constructed the genome-scale metabolic network of Bacillus licheniformis (B. licheniformis) WX-02 by combining genomic annotation, high-throughput phenotype microarray (PM) experiments and literature-based metabolic information. The accuracy of the metabolic network was assessed by an OmniLog PM experiment. The final metabolic model iWX1009 contains 1009 genes, 1141 metabolites and 1762 reactions, and the predicted metabolic phenotypes showed an agreement rate of 76.8% with experimental PM data. In addition, key metabolic features such as growth yield, utilization of different substrates and essential genes were identified by flux balance analysis. A total of 195 essential genes were predicted from LB medium, among which 149 were verified with the experimental essential gene set of B. subtilis 168. With the removal of 5 reactions from the network, pathways for poly-γ-glutamic acid (γ-PGA) synthesis were optimized and the γ-PGA yield reached 83.8 mmol/h. Furthermore, the important metabolites and pathways related to γ-PGA synthesis and bacterium growth were comprehensively analyzed. The present study provides valuable clues for exploring the metabolisms and metabolic regulation of γ-PGA synthesis in B. licheniformis WX-02. Copyright © 2016 Institut Pasteur. Published by Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.

  9. Preferential attachment in the evolution of metabolic networks

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Elofsson Arne

    2005-11-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background Many biological networks show some characteristics of scale-free networks. Scale-free networks can evolve through preferential attachment where new nodes are preferentially attached to well connected nodes. In networks which have evolved through preferential attachment older nodes should have a higher average connectivity than younger nodes. Here we have investigated preferential attachment in the context of metabolic networks. Results The connectivities of the enzymes in the metabolic network of Escherichia coli were determined and representatives for these enzymes were located in 11 eukaryotes, 17 archaea and 46 bacteria. E. coli enzymes which have representatives in eukaryotes have a higher average connectivity while enzymes which are represented only in the prokaryotes, and especially the enzymes only present in βγ-proteobacteria, have lower connectivities than expected by chance. Interestingly, the enzymes which have been proposed as candidates for horizontal gene transfer have a higher average connectivity than the other enzymes. Furthermore, It was found that new edges are added to the highly connected enzymes at a faster rate than to enzymes with low connectivities which is consistent with preferential attachment. Conclusion Here, we have found indications of preferential attachment in the metabolic network of E. coli. A possible biological explanation for preferential attachment growth of metabolic networks is that novel enzymes created through gene duplication maintain some of the compounds involved in the original reaction, throughout its future evolution. In addition, we found that enzymes which are candidates for horizontal gene transfer have a higher average connectivity than other enzymes. This indicates that while new enzymes are attached preferentially to highly connected enzymes, these highly connected enzymes have sometimes been introduced into the E. coli genome by horizontal gene transfer. We speculate

  10. Yeast 5 – an expanded reconstruction of the Saccharomyces cerevisiae metabolic network

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    Heavner Benjamin D

    2012-06-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background Efforts to improve the computational reconstruction of the Saccharomyces cerevisiae biochemical reaction network and to refine the stoichiometrically constrained metabolic models that can be derived from such a reconstruction have continued since the first stoichiometrically constrained yeast genome scale metabolic model was published in 2003. Continuing this ongoing process, we have constructed an update to the Yeast Consensus Reconstruction, Yeast 5. The Yeast Consensus Reconstruction is a product of efforts to forge a community-based reconstruction emphasizing standards compliance and biochemical accuracy via evidence-based selection of reactions. It draws upon models published by a variety of independent research groups as well as information obtained from biochemical databases and primary literature. Results Yeast 5 refines the biochemical reactions included in the reconstruction, particularly reactions involved in sphingolipid metabolism; updates gene-reaction annotations; and emphasizes the distinction between reconstruction and stoichiometrically constrained model. Although it was not a primary goal, this update also improves the accuracy of model prediction of viability and auxotrophy phenotypes and increases the number of epistatic interactions. This update maintains an emphasis on standards compliance, unambiguous metabolite naming, and computer-readable annotations available through a structured document format. Additionally, we have developed MATLAB scripts to evaluate the model’s predictive accuracy and to demonstrate basic model applications such as simulating aerobic and anaerobic growth. These scripts, which provide an independent tool for evaluating the performance of various stoichiometrically constrained yeast metabolic models using flux balance analysis, are included as Additional files 1, 2 and 3. Additional file 1 Function testYeastModel.m.m. Click here for file Additional file 2 Function model

  11. Estimating the size of the solution space of metabolic networks

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    Mulet Roberto

    2008-05-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background Cellular metabolism is one of the most investigated system of biological interactions. While the topological nature of individual reactions and pathways in the network is quite well understood there is still a lack of comprehension regarding the global functional behavior of the system. In the last few years flux-balance analysis (FBA has been the most successful and widely used technique for studying metabolism at system level. This method strongly relies on the hypothesis that the organism maximizes an objective function. However only under very specific biological conditions (e.g. maximization of biomass for E. coli in reach nutrient medium the cell seems to obey such optimization law. A more refined analysis not assuming extremization remains an elusive task for large metabolic systems due to algorithmic limitations. Results In this work we propose a novel algorithmic strategy that provides an efficient characterization of the whole set of stable fluxes compatible with the metabolic constraints. Using a technique derived from the fields of statistical physics and information theory we designed a message-passing algorithm to estimate the size of the affine space containing all possible steady-state flux distributions of metabolic networks. The algorithm, based on the well known Bethe approximation, can be used to approximately compute the volume of a non full-dimensional convex polytope in high dimensions. We first compare the accuracy of the predictions with an exact algorithm on small random metabolic networks. We also verify that the predictions of the algorithm match closely those of Monte Carlo based methods in the case of the Red Blood Cell metabolic network. Then we test the effect of gene knock-outs on the size of the solution space in the case of E. coli central metabolism. Finally we analyze the statistical properties of the average fluxes of the reactions in the E. coli metabolic network. Conclusion We propose a

  12. Context-specific metabolic networks are consistent with experiments.

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    Scott A Becker

    2008-05-01

    Full Text Available Reconstructions of cellular metabolism are publicly available for a variety of different microorganisms and some mammalian genomes. To date, these reconstructions are "genome-scale" and strive to include all reactions implied by the genome annotation, as well as those with direct experimental evidence. Clearly, many of the reactions in a genome-scale reconstruction will not be active under particular conditions or in a particular cell type. Methods to tailor these comprehensive genome-scale reconstructions into context-specific networks will aid predictive in silico modeling for a particular situation. We present a method called Gene Inactivity Moderated by Metabolism and Expression (GIMME to achieve this goal. The GIMME algorithm uses quantitative gene expression data and one or more presupposed metabolic objectives to produce the context-specific reconstruction that is most consistent with the available data. Furthermore, the algorithm provides a quantitative inconsistency score indicating how consistent a set of gene expression data is with a particular metabolic objective. We show that this algorithm produces results consistent with biological experiments and intuition for adaptive evolution of bacteria, rational design of metabolic engineering strains, and human skeletal muscle cells. This work represents progress towards producing constraint-based models of metabolism that are specific to the conditions where the expression profiling data is available.

  13. Complex Chemical Reaction Networks from Heuristics-Aided Quantum Chemistry.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Rappoport, Dmitrij; Galvin, Cooper J; Zubarev, Dmitry Yu; Aspuru-Guzik, Alán

    2014-03-11

    While structures and reactivities of many small molecules can be computed efficiently and accurately using quantum chemical methods, heuristic approaches remain essential for modeling complex structures and large-scale chemical systems. Here, we present a heuristics-aided quantum chemical methodology applicable to complex chemical reaction networks such as those arising in cell metabolism and prebiotic chemistry. Chemical heuristics offer an expedient way of traversing high-dimensional reactive potential energy surfaces and are combined here with quantum chemical structure optimizations, which yield the structures and energies of the reaction intermediates and products. Application of heuristics-aided quantum chemical methodology to the formose reaction reproduces the experimentally observed reaction products, major reaction pathways, and autocatalytic cycles.

  14. Thermodynamics of random reaction networks.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Fischer, Jakob; Kleidon, Axel; Dittrich, Peter

    2015-01-01

    Reaction networks are useful for analyzing reaction systems occurring in chemistry, systems biology, or Earth system science. Despite the importance of thermodynamic disequilibrium for many of those systems, the general thermodynamic properties of reaction networks are poorly understood. To circumvent the problem of sparse thermodynamic data, we generate artificial reaction networks and investigate their non-equilibrium steady state for various boundary fluxes. We generate linear and nonlinear networks using four different complex network models (Erdős-Rényi, Barabási-Albert, Watts-Strogatz, Pan-Sinha) and compare their topological properties with real reaction networks. For similar boundary conditions the steady state flow through the linear networks is about one order of magnitude higher than the flow through comparable nonlinear networks. In all networks, the flow decreases with the distance between the inflow and outflow boundary species, with Watts-Strogatz networks showing a significantly smaller slope compared to the three other network types. The distribution of entropy production of the individual reactions inside the network follows a power law in the intermediate region with an exponent of circa -1.5 for linear and -1.66 for nonlinear networks. An elevated entropy production rate is found in reactions associated with weakly connected species. This effect is stronger in nonlinear networks than in the linear ones. Increasing the flow through the nonlinear networks also increases the number of cycles and leads to a narrower distribution of chemical potentials. We conclude that the relation between distribution of dissipation, network topology and strength of disequilibrium is nontrivial and can be studied systematically by artificial reaction networks.

  15. Enumeration of smallest intervention strategies in genome-scale metabolic networks.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Axel von Kamp

    2014-01-01

    Full Text Available One ultimate goal of metabolic network modeling is the rational redesign of biochemical networks to optimize the production of certain compounds by cellular systems. Although several constraint-based optimization techniques have been developed for this purpose, methods for systematic enumeration of intervention strategies in genome-scale metabolic networks are still lacking. In principle, Minimal Cut Sets (MCSs; inclusion-minimal combinations of reaction or gene deletions that lead to the fulfilment of a given intervention goal provide an exhaustive enumeration approach. However, their disadvantage is the combinatorial explosion in larger networks and the requirement to compute first the elementary modes (EMs which itself is impractical in genome-scale networks. We present MCSEnumerator, a new method for effective enumeration of the smallest MCSs (with fewest interventions in genome-scale metabolic network models. For this we combine two approaches, namely (i the mapping of MCSs to EMs in a dual network, and (ii a modified algorithm by which shortest EMs can be effectively determined in large networks. In this way, we can identify the smallest MCSs by calculating the shortest EMs in the dual network. Realistic application examples demonstrate that our algorithm is able to list thousands of the most efficient intervention strategies in genome-scale networks for various intervention problems. For instance, for the first time we could enumerate all synthetic lethals in E.coli with combinations of up to 5 reactions. We also applied the new algorithm exemplarily to compute strain designs for growth-coupled synthesis of different products (ethanol, fumarate, serine by E.coli. We found numerous new engineering strategies partially requiring less knockouts and guaranteeing higher product yields (even without the assumption of optimal growth than reported previously. The strength of the presented approach is that smallest intervention strategies can be

  16. Development and analysis of an in vivo-compatible metabolic network of Mycobacterium tuberculosis

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    Reifman Jaques

    2010-11-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background During infection, Mycobacterium tuberculosis confronts a generally hostile and nutrient-poor in vivo host environment. Existing models and analyses of M. tuberculosis metabolic networks are able to reproduce experimentally measured cellular growth rates and identify genes required for growth in a range of different in vitro media. However, these models, under in vitro conditions, do not provide an adequate description of the metabolic processes required by the pathogen to infect and persist in a host. Results To better account for the metabolic activity of M. tuberculosis in the host environment, we developed a set of procedures to systematically modify an existing in vitro metabolic network by enhancing the agreement between calculated and in vivo-measured gene essentiality data. After our modifications, the new in vivo network contained 663 genes, 838 metabolites, and 1,049 reactions and had a significantly increased sensitivity (0.81 in predicted gene essentiality than the in vitro network (0.31. We verified the modifications generated from the purely computational analysis through a review of the literature and found, for example, that, as the analysis suggested, lipids are used as the main source for carbon metabolism and oxygen must be available for the pathogen under in vivo conditions. Moreover, we used the developed in vivo network to predict the effects of double-gene deletions on M. tuberculosis growth in the host environment, explore metabolic adaptations to life in an acidic environment, highlight the importance of different enzymes in the tricarboxylic acid-cycle under different limiting nutrient conditions, investigate the effects of inhibiting multiple reactions, and look at the importance of both aerobic and anaerobic cellular respiration during infection. Conclusions The network modifications we implemented suggest a distinctive set of metabolic conditions and requirements faced by M. tuberculosis during

  17. Thermodynamics of random reaction networks.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Jakob Fischer

    Full Text Available Reaction networks are useful for analyzing reaction systems occurring in chemistry, systems biology, or Earth system science. Despite the importance of thermodynamic disequilibrium for many of those systems, the general thermodynamic properties of reaction networks are poorly understood. To circumvent the problem of sparse thermodynamic data, we generate artificial reaction networks and investigate their non-equilibrium steady state for various boundary fluxes. We generate linear and nonlinear networks using four different complex network models (Erdős-Rényi, Barabási-Albert, Watts-Strogatz, Pan-Sinha and compare their topological properties with real reaction networks. For similar boundary conditions the steady state flow through the linear networks is about one order of magnitude higher than the flow through comparable nonlinear networks. In all networks, the flow decreases with the distance between the inflow and outflow boundary species, with Watts-Strogatz networks showing a significantly smaller slope compared to the three other network types. The distribution of entropy production of the individual reactions inside the network follows a power law in the intermediate region with an exponent of circa -1.5 for linear and -1.66 for nonlinear networks. An elevated entropy production rate is found in reactions associated with weakly connected species. This effect is stronger in nonlinear networks than in the linear ones. Increasing the flow through the nonlinear networks also increases the number of cycles and leads to a narrower distribution of chemical potentials. We conclude that the relation between distribution of dissipation, network topology and strength of disequilibrium is nontrivial and can be studied systematically by artificial reaction networks.

  18. VRML metabolic network visualizer.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Rojdestvenski, Igor

    2003-03-01

    A successful date collection visualization should satisfy a set of many requirements: unification of diverse data formats, support for serendipity research, support of hierarchical structures, algorithmizability, vast information density, Internet-readiness, and other. Recently, virtual reality has made significant progress in engineering, architectural design, entertainment and communication. We experiment with the possibility of using the immersive abstract three-dimensional visualizations of the metabolic networks. We present the trial Metabolic Network Visualizer software, which produces graphical representation of a metabolic network as a VRML world from a formal description written in a simple SGML-type scripting language.

  19. Energetics of glucose metabolism: a phenomenological approach to metabolic network modeling.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Diederichs, Frank

    2010-08-12

    A new formalism to describe metabolic fluxes as well as membrane transport processes was developed. The new flux equations are comparable to other phenomenological laws. Michaelis-Menten like expressions, as well as flux equations of nonequilibrium thermodynamics, can be regarded as special cases of these new equations. For metabolic network modeling, variable conductances and driving forces are required to enable pathway control and to allow a rapid response to perturbations. When applied to oxidative phosphorylation, results of simulations show that whole oxidative phosphorylation cannot be described as a two-flux-system according to nonequilibrium thermodynamics, although all coupled reactions per se fulfill the equations of this theory. Simulations show that activation of ATP-coupled load reactions plus glucose oxidation is brought about by an increase of only two different conductances: a [Ca(2+)] dependent increase of cytosolic load conductances, and an increase of phosphofructokinase conductance by [AMP], which in turn becomes increased through [ADP] generation by those load reactions. In ventricular myocytes, this feedback mechanism is sufficient to increase cellular power output and O(2) consumption several fold, without any appreciable impairment of energetic parameters. Glucose oxidation proceeds near maximal power output, since transformed input and output conductances are nearly equal, yielding an efficiency of about 0.5. This conductance matching is fulfilled also by glucose oxidation of β-cells. But, as a price for the metabolic mechanism of glucose recognition, β-cells have only a limited capability to increase their power output.

  20. Structure versus time in the evolutionary diversification of avian carotenoid metabolic networks.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Morrison, Erin S; Badyaev, Alexander V

    2018-05-01

    Historical associations of genes and proteins are thought to delineate pathways available to subsequent evolution; however, the effects of past functional involvements on contemporary evolution are rarely quantified. Here, we examined the extent to which the structure of a carotenoid enzymatic network persists in avian evolution. Specifically, we tested whether the evolution of carotenoid networks was most concordant with phylogenetically structured expansion from core reactions of common ancestors or with subsampling of biochemical pathway modules from an ancestral network. We compared structural and historical associations in 467 carotenoid networks of extant and ancestral species and uncovered the overwhelming effect of pre-existing metabolic network structure on carotenoid diversification over the last 50 million years of avian evolution. Over evolutionary time, birds repeatedly subsampled and recombined conserved biochemical modules, which likely maintained the overall structure of the carotenoid metabolic network during avian evolution. These findings explain the recurrent convergence of evolutionary distant species in carotenoid metabolism and weak phylogenetic signal in avian carotenoid evolution. Remarkable retention of an ancient metabolic structure throughout extensive and prolonged ecological diversification in avian carotenoid metabolism illustrates a fundamental requirement of organismal evolution - historical continuity of a deterministic network that links past and present functional associations of its components. © 2018 European Society For Evolutionary Biology. Journal of Evolutionary Biology © 2018 European Society For Evolutionary Biology.

  1. Metabolic network prediction through pairwise rational kernels.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Roche-Lima, Abiel; Domaratzki, Michael; Fristensky, Brian

    2014-09-26

    Metabolic networks are represented by the set of metabolic pathways. Metabolic pathways are a series of biochemical reactions, in which the product (output) from one reaction serves as the substrate (input) to another reaction. Many pathways remain incompletely characterized. One of the major challenges of computational biology is to obtain better models of metabolic pathways. Existing models are dependent on the annotation of the genes. This propagates error accumulation when the pathways are predicted by incorrectly annotated genes. Pairwise classification methods are supervised learning methods used to classify new pair of entities. Some of these classification methods, e.g., Pairwise Support Vector Machines (SVMs), use pairwise kernels. Pairwise kernels describe similarity measures between two pairs of entities. Using pairwise kernels to handle sequence data requires long processing times and large storage. Rational kernels are kernels based on weighted finite-state transducers that represent similarity measures between sequences or automata. They have been effectively used in problems that handle large amount of sequence information such as protein essentiality, natural language processing and machine translations. We create a new family of pairwise kernels using weighted finite-state transducers (called Pairwise Rational Kernel (PRK)) to predict metabolic pathways from a variety of biological data. PRKs take advantage of the simpler representations and faster algorithms of transducers. Because raw sequence data can be used, the predictor model avoids the errors introduced by incorrect gene annotations. We then developed several experiments with PRKs and Pairwise SVM to validate our methods using the metabolic network of Saccharomyces cerevisiae. As a result, when PRKs are used, our method executes faster in comparison with other pairwise kernels. Also, when we use PRKs combined with other simple kernels that include evolutionary information, the accuracy

  2. Evolution of metabolic network organization

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Bonchev Danail

    2010-05-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background Comparison of metabolic networks across species is a key to understanding how evolutionary pressures shape these networks. By selecting taxa representative of different lineages or lifestyles and using a comprehensive set of descriptors of the structure and complexity of their metabolic networks, one can highlight both qualitative and quantitative differences in the metabolic organization of species subject to distinct evolutionary paths or environmental constraints. Results We used a novel representation of metabolic networks, termed network of interacting pathways or NIP, to focus on the modular, high-level organization of the metabolic capabilities of the cell. Using machine learning techniques we identified the most relevant aspects of cellular organization that change under evolutionary pressures. We considered the transitions from prokarya to eukarya (with a focus on the transitions among the archaea, bacteria and eukarya, from unicellular to multicellular eukarya, from free living to host-associated bacteria, from anaerobic to aerobic, as well as the acquisition of cell motility or growth in an environment of various levels of salinity or temperature. Intuitively, we expect organisms with more complex lifestyles to have more complex and robust metabolic networks. Here we demonstrate for the first time that such organisms are not only characterized by larger, denser networks of metabolic pathways but also have more efficiently organized cross communications, as revealed by subtle changes in network topology. These changes are unevenly distributed among metabolic pathways, with specific categories of pathways being promoted to more central locations as an answer to environmental constraints. Conclusions Combining methods from graph theory and machine learning, we have shown here that evolutionary pressures not only affects gene and protein sequences, but also specific details of the complex wiring of functional modules

  3. FluxVisualizer, a Software to Visualize Fluxes through Metabolic Networks

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    Tim Daniel Rose

    2018-04-01

    Full Text Available FluxVisualizer (Version 1.0, 2017, freely available at https://fluxvisualizer.ibgc.cnrs.fr is a software to visualize fluxes values on a scalable vector graphic (SVG representation of a metabolic network by colouring or increasing the width of reaction arrows of the SVG file. FluxVisualizer does not aim to draw metabolic networks but to use a customer’s SVG file allowing him to exploit his representation standards with a minimum of constraints. FluxVisualizer is especially suitable for small to medium size metabolic networks, where a visual representation of the fluxes makes sense. The flux distribution can either be an elementary flux mode (EFM, a flux balance analysis (FBA result or any other flux distribution. It allows the automatic visualization of a series of pathways of the same network as is needed for a set of EFMs. The software is coded in python3 and provides a graphical user interface (GUI and an application programming interface (API. All functionalities of the program can be used from the API and the GUI and allows advanced users to add their own functionalities. The software is able to work with various formats of flux distributions (Metatool, CellNetAnalyzer, COPASI and FAME export files as well as with Excel files. This simple software can save a lot of time when evaluating fluxes simulations on a metabolic network.

  4. Aligning Metabolic Pathways Exploiting Binary Relation of Reactions.

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    Yiran Huang

    Full Text Available Metabolic pathway alignment has been widely used to find one-to-one and/or one-to-many reaction mappings to identify the alternative pathways that have similar functions through different sets of reactions, which has important applications in reconstructing phylogeny and understanding metabolic functions. The existing alignment methods exhaustively search reaction sets, which may become infeasible for large pathways. To address this problem, we present an effective alignment method for accurately extracting reaction mappings between two metabolic pathways. We show that connected relation between reactions can be formalized as binary relation of reactions in metabolic pathways, and the multiplications of zero-one matrices for binary relations of reactions can be accomplished in finite steps. By utilizing the multiplications of zero-one matrices for binary relation of reactions, we efficiently obtain reaction sets in a small number of steps without exhaustive search, and accurately uncover biologically relevant reaction mappings. Furthermore, we introduce a measure of topological similarity of nodes (reactions by comparing the structural similarity of the k-neighborhood subgraphs of the nodes in aligning metabolic pathways. We employ this similarity metric to improve the accuracy of the alignments. The experimental results on the KEGG database show that when compared with other state-of-the-art methods, in most cases, our method obtains better performance in the node correctness and edge correctness, and the number of the edges of the largest common connected subgraph for one-to-one reaction mappings, and the number of correct one-to-many reaction mappings. Our method is scalable in finding more reaction mappings with better biological relevance in large metabolic pathways.

  5. Metabolic Network Discovery by Top-Down and Bottom-Up Approaches and Paths for Reconciliation

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Çakır, Tunahan, E-mail: tcakir@gyte.edu.tr [Computational Systems Biology Group, Department of Bioengineering, Gebze Technical University (formerly known as Gebze Institute of Technology), Gebze (Turkey); Khatibipour, Mohammad Jafar [Computational Systems Biology Group, Department of Bioengineering, Gebze Technical University (formerly known as Gebze Institute of Technology), Gebze (Turkey); Department of Chemical Engineering, Gebze Technical University (formerly known as Gebze Institute of Technology), Gebze (Turkey)

    2014-12-03

    The primary focus in the network-centric analysis of cellular metabolism by systems biology approaches is to identify the active metabolic network for the condition of interest. Two major approaches are available for the discovery of the condition-specific metabolic networks. One approach starts from genome-scale metabolic networks, which cover all possible reactions known to occur in the related organism in a condition-independent manner, and applies methods such as the optimization-based Flux-Balance Analysis to elucidate the active network. The other approach starts from the condition-specific metabolome data, and processes the data with statistical or optimization-based methods to extract information content of the data such that the active network is inferred. These approaches, termed bottom-up and top-down, respectively, are currently employed independently. However, considering that both approaches have the same goal, they can both benefit from each other paving the way for the novel integrative analysis methods of metabolome data- and flux-analysis approaches in the post-genomic era. This study reviews the strengths of constraint-based analysis and network inference methods reported in the metabolic systems biology field; then elaborates on the potential paths to reconcile the two approaches to shed better light on how the metabolism functions.

  6. Metabolic Network Discovery by Top-Down and Bottom-Up Approaches and Paths for Reconciliation

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Çakır, Tunahan; Khatibipour, Mohammad Jafar

    2014-01-01

    The primary focus in the network-centric analysis of cellular metabolism by systems biology approaches is to identify the active metabolic network for the condition of interest. Two major approaches are available for the discovery of the condition-specific metabolic networks. One approach starts from genome-scale metabolic networks, which cover all possible reactions known to occur in the related organism in a condition-independent manner, and applies methods such as the optimization-based Flux-Balance Analysis to elucidate the active network. The other approach starts from the condition-specific metabolome data, and processes the data with statistical or optimization-based methods to extract information content of the data such that the active network is inferred. These approaches, termed bottom-up and top-down, respectively, are currently employed independently. However, considering that both approaches have the same goal, they can both benefit from each other paving the way for the novel integrative analysis methods of metabolome data- and flux-analysis approaches in the post-genomic era. This study reviews the strengths of constraint-based analysis and network inference methods reported in the metabolic systems biology field; then elaborates on the potential paths to reconcile the two approaches to shed better light on how the metabolism functions.

  7. Genome-scale reconstruction of the Streptococcus pyogenes M49 metabolic network reveals growth requirements and indicates potential drug targets

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Levering, J.; Fiedler, T.; Sieg, A.; van Grinsven, K.W.A.; Hering, S.; Veith, N.; Olivier, B.G.; Klett, L.; Hugenholtz, J.; Teusink, B.; Kreikemeyer, B.; Kummer, U.

    2016-01-01

    Genome-scale metabolic models comprise stoichiometric relations between metabolites, as well as associations between genes and metabolic reactions and facilitate the analysis of metabolism. We computationally reconstructed the metabolic network of the lactic acid bacterium Streptococcus pyogenes

  8. Uncovering transcriptional regulation of metabolism by using metabolic network topology

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Patil, Kiran Raosaheb; Nielsen, Jens

    2005-01-01

    in the metabolic network that follow a common transcriptional response. Thus, the algorithm enables identification of so-called reporter metabolites (metabolites around which the most significant transcriptional changes occur) and a set of connected genes with significant and coordinated response to genetic......Cellular response to genetic and environmental perturbations is often reflected and/or mediated through changes in the metabolism, because the latter plays a key role in providing Gibbs free energy and precursors for biosynthesis. Such metabolic changes are often exerted through transcriptional...... therefore developed an algorithm that is based on hypothesis-driven data analysis to uncover the transcriptional regulatory architecture of metabolic networks. By using information on the metabolic network topology from genome-scale metabolic reconstruction, we show that it is possible to reveal patterns...

  9. Detection of driver metabolites in the human liver metabolic network using structural controllability analysis

    Science.gov (United States)

    2014-01-01

    Background Abnormal states in human liver metabolism are major causes of human liver diseases ranging from hepatitis to hepatic tumor. The accumulation in relevant data makes it feasible to derive a large-scale human liver metabolic network (HLMN) and to discover important biological principles or drug-targets based on network analysis. Some studies have shown that interesting biological phenomenon and drug-targets could be discovered by applying structural controllability analysis (which is a newly prevailed concept in networks) to biological networks. The exploration on the connections between structural controllability theory and the HLMN could be used to uncover valuable information on the human liver metabolism from a fresh perspective. Results We applied structural controllability analysis to the HLMN and detected driver metabolites. The driver metabolites tend to have strong ability to influence the states of other metabolites and weak susceptibility to be influenced by the states of others. In addition, the metabolites were classified into three classes: critical, high-frequency and low-frequency driver metabolites. Among the identified 36 critical driver metabolites, 27 metabolites were found to be essential; the high-frequency driver metabolites tend to participate in different metabolic pathways, which are important in regulating the whole metabolic systems. Moreover, we explored some other possible connections between the structural controllability theory and the HLMN, and find that transport reactions and the environment play important roles in the human liver metabolism. Conclusion There are interesting connections between the structural controllability theory and the human liver metabolism: driver metabolites have essential biological functions; the crucial role of extracellular metabolites and transport reactions in controlling the HLMN highlights the importance of the environment in the health of human liver metabolism. PMID:24885538

  10. Comprehensive Mapping of Pluripotent Stem Cell Metabolism Using Dynamic Genome-Scale Network Modeling

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Sriram Chandrasekaran

    2017-12-01

    Full Text Available Summary: Metabolism is an emerging stem cell hallmark tied to cell fate, pluripotency, and self-renewal, yet systems-level understanding of stem cell metabolism has been limited by the lack of genome-scale network models. Here, we develop a systems approach to integrate time-course metabolomics data with a computational model of metabolism to analyze the metabolic state of naive and primed murine pluripotent stem cells. Using this approach, we find that one-carbon metabolism involving phosphoglycerate dehydrogenase, folate synthesis, and nucleotide synthesis is a key pathway that differs between the two states, resulting in differential sensitivity to anti-folates. The model also predicts that the pluripotency factor Lin28 regulates this one-carbon metabolic pathway, which we validate using metabolomics data from Lin28-deficient cells. Moreover, we identify and validate metabolic reactions related to S-adenosyl-methionine production that can differentially impact histone methylation in naive and primed cells. Our network-based approach provides a framework for characterizing metabolic changes influencing pluripotency and cell fate. : Chandrasekaran et al. use computational modeling, metabolomics, and metabolic inhibitors to discover metabolic differences between various pluripotent stem cell states and infer their impact on stem cell fate decisions. Keywords: systems biology, stem cell biology, metabolism, genome-scale modeling, pluripotency, histone methylation, naive (ground state, primed state, cell fate, metabolic network

  11. Modeling complex metabolic reactions, ecological systems, and financial and legal networks with MIANN models based on Markov-Wiener node descriptors.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Duardo-Sánchez, Aliuska; Munteanu, Cristian R; Riera-Fernández, Pablo; López-Díaz, Antonio; Pazos, Alejandro; González-Díaz, Humberto

    2014-01-27

    The use of numerical parameters in Complex Network analysis is expanding to new fields of application. At a molecular level, we can use them to describe the molecular structure of chemical entities, protein interactions, or metabolic networks. However, the applications are not restricted to the world of molecules and can be extended to the study of macroscopic nonliving systems, organisms, or even legal or social networks. On the other hand, the development of the field of Artificial Intelligence has led to the formulation of computational algorithms whose design is based on the structure and functioning of networks of biological neurons. These algorithms, called Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs), can be useful for the study of complex networks, since the numerical parameters that encode information of the network (for example centralities/node descriptors) can be used as inputs for the ANNs. The Wiener index (W) is a graph invariant widely used in chemoinformatics to quantify the molecular structure of drugs and to study complex networks. In this work, we explore for the first time the possibility of using Markov chains to calculate analogues of node distance numbers/W to describe complex networks from the point of view of their nodes. These parameters are called Markov-Wiener node descriptors of order k(th) (W(k)). Please, note that these descriptors are not related to Markov-Wiener stochastic processes. Here, we calculated the W(k)(i) values for a very high number of nodes (>100,000) in more than 100 different complex networks using the software MI-NODES. These networks were grouped according to the field of application. Molecular networks include the Metabolic Reaction Networks (MRNs) of 40 different organisms. In addition, we analyzed other biological and legal and social networks. These include the Interaction Web Database Biological Networks (IWDBNs), with 75 food webs or ecological systems and the Spanish Financial Law Network (SFLN). The calculated W

  12. MOST-visualization: software for producing automated textbook-style maps of genome-scale metabolic networks.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kelley, James J; Maor, Shay; Kim, Min Kyung; Lane, Anatoliy; Lun, Desmond S

    2017-08-15

    Visualization of metabolites, reactions and pathways in genome-scale metabolic networks (GEMs) can assist in understanding cellular metabolism. Three attributes are desirable in software used for visualizing GEMs: (i) automation, since GEMs can be quite large; (ii) production of understandable maps that provide ease in identification of pathways, reactions and metabolites; and (iii) visualization of the entire network to show how pathways are interconnected. No software currently exists for visualizing GEMs that satisfies all three characteristics, but MOST-Visualization, an extension of the software package MOST (Metabolic Optimization and Simulation Tool), satisfies (i), and by using a pre-drawn overview map of metabolism based on the Roche map satisfies (ii) and comes close to satisfying (iii). MOST is distributed for free on the GNU General Public License. The software and full documentation are available at http://most.ccib.rutgers.edu/. dslun@rutgers.edu. Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online. © The Author (2017). Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com

  13. Network motif frequency vectors reveal evolving metabolic network organisation.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Pearcy, Nicole; Crofts, Jonathan J; Chuzhanova, Nadia

    2015-01-01

    At the systems level many organisms of interest may be described by their patterns of interaction, and as such, are perhaps best characterised via network or graph models. Metabolic networks, in particular, are fundamental to the proper functioning of many important biological processes, and thus, have been widely studied over the past decade or so. Such investigations have revealed a number of shared topological features, such as a short characteristic path-length, large clustering coefficient and hierarchical modular structure. However, the extent to which evolutionary and functional properties of metabolism manifest via this underlying network architecture remains unclear. In this paper, we employ a novel graph embedding technique, based upon low-order network motifs, to compare metabolic network structure for 383 bacterial species categorised according to a number of biological features. In particular, we introduce a new global significance score which enables us to quantify important evolutionary relationships that exist between organisms and their physical environments. Using this new approach, we demonstrate a number of significant correlations between environmental factors, such as growth conditions and habitat variability, and network motif structure, providing evidence that organism adaptability leads to increased complexities in the resultant metabolic networks.

  14. Modular co-evolution of metabolic networks

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Yu Zhong-Hao

    2007-08-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background The architecture of biological networks has been reported to exhibit high level of modularity, and to some extent, topological modules of networks overlap with known functional modules. However, how the modular topology of the molecular network affects the evolution of its member proteins remains unclear. Results In this work, the functional and evolutionary modularity of Homo sapiens (H. sapiens metabolic network were investigated from a topological point of view. Network decomposition shows that the metabolic network is organized in a highly modular core-periphery way, in which the core modules are tightly linked together and perform basic metabolism functions, whereas the periphery modules only interact with few modules and accomplish relatively independent and specialized functions. Moreover, over half of the modules exhibit co-evolutionary feature and belong to specific evolutionary ages. Peripheral modules tend to evolve more cohesively and faster than core modules do. Conclusion The correlation between functional, evolutionary and topological modularity suggests that the evolutionary history and functional requirements of metabolic systems have been imprinted in the architecture of metabolic networks. Such systems level analysis could demonstrate how the evolution of genes may be placed in a genome-scale network context, giving a novel perspective on molecular evolution.

  15. Interconnectivity of human cellular metabolism and disease prevalence

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Lee, Deok-Sun

    2010-01-01

    Fluctuations of metabolic reaction fluxes may cause abnormal concentrations of toxic or essential metabolites, possibly leading to metabolic diseases. The mutual binding of enzymatic proteins and ones involving common metabolites enforces distinct coupled reactions, by which local perturbations may spread through the cellular network. Such network effects at the molecular interaction level in human cellular metabolism can reappear in the patterns of disease occurrence. Here we construct the enzyme-reaction network and the metabolite-reaction network, capturing the flux coupling of metabolic reactions caused by the interacting enzymes and the shared metabolites, respectively. Diseases potentially caused by the failure of individual metabolic reactions can be identified by using the known disease–gene association, which allows us to derive the probability of an inactivated reaction causing diseases from the disease records at the population level. We find that the greater the number of proteins that catalyze a reaction, the higher the mean prevalence of its associated diseases. Moreover, the number of connected reactions and the mean size of the avalanches in the networks constructed are also shown to be positively correlated with the disease prevalence. These findings illuminate the impact of the cellular network topology on disease development, suggesting that the global organization of the molecular interaction network should be understood to assist in disease diagnosis, treatment, and drug discovery

  16. Interconnectivity of human cellular metabolism and disease prevalence

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lee, Deok-Sun

    2010-12-01

    Fluctuations of metabolic reaction fluxes may cause abnormal concentrations of toxic or essential metabolites, possibly leading to metabolic diseases. The mutual binding of enzymatic proteins and ones involving common metabolites enforces distinct coupled reactions, by which local perturbations may spread through the cellular network. Such network effects at the molecular interaction level in human cellular metabolism can reappear in the patterns of disease occurrence. Here we construct the enzyme-reaction network and the metabolite-reaction network, capturing the flux coupling of metabolic reactions caused by the interacting enzymes and the shared metabolites, respectively. Diseases potentially caused by the failure of individual metabolic reactions can be identified by using the known disease-gene association, which allows us to derive the probability of an inactivated reaction causing diseases from the disease records at the population level. We find that the greater the number of proteins that catalyze a reaction, the higher the mean prevalence of its associated diseases. Moreover, the number of connected reactions and the mean size of the avalanches in the networks constructed are also shown to be positively correlated with the disease prevalence. These findings illuminate the impact of the cellular network topology on disease development, suggesting that the global organization of the molecular interaction network should be understood to assist in disease diagnosis, treatment, and drug discovery.

  17. Bringing metabolic networks to life: integration of kinetic, metabolic, and proteomic data

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Klipp Edda

    2006-12-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background Translating a known metabolic network into a dynamic model requires reasonable guesses of all enzyme parameters. In Bayesian parameter estimation, model parameters are described by a posterior probability distribution, which scores the potential parameter sets, showing how well each of them agrees with the data and with the prior assumptions made. Results We compute posterior distributions of kinetic parameters within a Bayesian framework, based on integration of kinetic, thermodynamic, metabolic, and proteomic data. The structure of the metabolic system (i.e., stoichiometries and enzyme regulation needs to be known, and the reactions are modelled by convenience kinetics with thermodynamically independent parameters. The parameter posterior is computed in two separate steps: a first posterior summarises the available data on enzyme kinetic parameters; an improved second posterior is obtained by integrating metabolic fluxes, concentrations, and enzyme concentrations for one or more steady states. The data can be heterogenous, incomplete, and uncertain, and the posterior is approximated by a multivariate log-normal distribution. We apply the method to a model of the threonine synthesis pathway: the integration of metabolic data has little effect on the marginal posterior distributions of individual model parameters. Nevertheless, it leads to strong correlations between the parameters in the joint posterior distribution, which greatly improve the model predictions by the following Monte-Carlo simulations. Conclusion We present a standardised method to translate metabolic networks into dynamic models. To determine the model parameters, evidence from various experimental data is combined and weighted using Bayesian parameter estimation. The resulting posterior parameter distribution describes a statistical ensemble of parameter sets; the parameter variances and correlations can account for missing knowledge, measurement

  18. Genome-scale reconstruction of metabolic networks of Lactobacillus casei ATCC 334 and 12A.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Elena Vinay-Lara

    Full Text Available Lactobacillus casei strains are widely used in industry and the utility of this organism in these industrial applications is strain dependent. Hence, tools capable of predicting strain specific phenotypes would have utility in the selection of strains for specific industrial processes. Genome-scale metabolic models can be utilized to better understand genotype-phenotype relationships and to compare different organisms. To assist in the selection and development of strains with enhanced industrial utility, genome-scale models for L. casei ATCC 334, a well characterized strain, and strain 12A, a corn silage isolate, were constructed. Draft models were generated from RAST genome annotations using the Model SEED database and refined by evaluating ATP generating cycles, mass-and-charge-balances of reactions, and growth phenotypes. After the validation process was finished, we compared the metabolic networks of these two strains to identify metabolic, genetic and ortholog differences that may lead to different phenotypic behaviors. We conclude that the metabolic capabilities of the two networks are highly similar. The L. casei ATCC 334 model accounts for 1,040 reactions, 959 metabolites and 548 genes, while the L. casei 12A model accounts for 1,076 reactions, 979 metabolites and 640 genes. The developed L. casei ATCC 334 and 12A metabolic models will enable better understanding of the physiology of these organisms and be valuable tools in the development and selection of strains with enhanced utility in a variety of industrial applications.

  19. Modeling of fluctuating reaction networks

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Lipshtat, A.; Biham, O.

    2004-01-01

    Full Text:Various dynamical systems are organized as reaction networks, where the population size of one component affects the populations of all its neighbors. Such networks can be found in interstellar surface chemistry, cell biology, thin film growth and other systems. I cases where the populations of reactive species are large, the network can be modeled by rate equations which provide all reaction rates within mean field approximation. However, in small systems that are partitioned into sub-micron size, these populations strongly fluctuate. Under these conditions rate equations fail and the master equation is needed for modeling these reactions. However, the number of equations in the master equation grows exponentially with the number of reactive species, severely limiting its feasibility for complex networks. Here we present a method which dramatically reduces the number of equations, thus enabling the incorporation of the master equation in complex reaction networks. The method is examplified in the context of reaction network on dust grains. Its applicability for genetic networks will be discussed. 1. Efficient simulations of gas-grain chemistry in interstellar clouds. Azi Lipshtat and Ofer Biham, Phys. Rev. Lett. 93 (2004), 170601. 2. Modeling of negative autoregulated genetic networks in single cells. Azi Lipshtat, Hagai B. Perets, Nathalie Q. Balaban and Ofer Biham, Gene: evolutionary genomics (2004), In press

  20. Quantum chemical approach to estimating the thermodynamics of metabolic reactions.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Jinich, Adrian; Rappoport, Dmitrij; Dunn, Ian; Sanchez-Lengeling, Benjamin; Olivares-Amaya, Roberto; Noor, Elad; Even, Arren Bar; Aspuru-Guzik, Alán

    2014-11-12

    Thermodynamics plays an increasingly important role in modeling and engineering metabolism. We present the first nonempirical computational method for estimating standard Gibbs reaction energies of metabolic reactions based on quantum chemistry, which can help fill in the gaps in the existing thermodynamic data. When applied to a test set of reactions from core metabolism, the quantum chemical approach is comparable in accuracy to group contribution methods for isomerization and group transfer reactions and for reactions not including multiply charged anions. The errors in standard Gibbs reaction energy estimates are correlated with the charges of the participating molecules. The quantum chemical approach is amenable to systematic improvements and holds potential for providing thermodynamic data for all of metabolism.

  1. Reconstruction and in silico analysis of metabolic network for an oleaginous yeast, Yarrowia lipolytica.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Pengcheng Pan

    Full Text Available With the emergence of energy scarcity, the use of renewable energy sources such as biodiesel is becoming increasingly necessary. Recently, many researchers have focused their minds on Yarrowia lipolytica, a model oleaginous yeast, which can be employed to accumulate large amounts of lipids that could be further converted to biodiesel. In order to understand the metabolic characteristics of Y. lipolytica at a systems level and to examine the potential for enhanced lipid production, a genome-scale compartmentalized metabolic network was reconstructed based on a combination of genome annotation and the detailed biochemical knowledge from multiple databases such as KEGG, ENZYME and BIGG. The information about protein and reaction associations of all the organisms in KEGG and Expasy-ENZYME database was arranged into an EXCEL file that can then be regarded as a new useful database to generate other reconstructions. The generated model iYL619_PCP accounts for 619 genes, 843 metabolites and 1,142 reactions including 236 transport reactions, 125 exchange reactions and 13 spontaneous reactions. The in silico model successfully predicted the minimal media and the growing abilities on different substrates. With flux balance analysis, single gene knockouts were also simulated to predict the essential genes and partially essential genes. In addition, flux variability analysis was applied to design new mutant strains that will redirect fluxes through the network and may enhance the production of lipid. This genome-scale metabolic model of Y. lipolytica can facilitate system-level metabolic analysis as well as strain development for improving the production of biodiesels and other valuable products by Y. lipolytica and other closely related oleaginous yeasts.

  2. Reaction networks as systems for resource allocation: a variational principle for their non-equilibrium steady states.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Andrea De Martino

    Full Text Available Within a fully microscopic setting, we derive a variational principle for the non-equilibrium steady states of chemical reaction networks, valid for time-scales over which chemical potentials can be taken to be slowly varying: at stationarity the system minimizes a global function of the reaction fluxes with the form of a Hopfield Hamiltonian with hebbian couplings, that is explicitly seen to correspond to the rate of decay of entropy production over time. Guided by this analogy, we show that reaction networks can be formally re-cast as systems of interacting reactions that optimize the use of the available compounds by competing for substrates, akin to agents competing for a limited resource in an optimal allocation problem. As an illustration, we analyze the scenario that emerges in two simple cases: that of toy (random reaction networks and that of a metabolic network model of the human red blood cell.

  3. A workflow for mathematical modeling of subcellular metabolic pathways in leaf metabolism of Arabidopsis thaliana

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Thomas eNägele

    2013-12-01

    Full Text Available During the last decade genome sequencing has experienced a rapid technological development resulting in numerous sequencing projects and applications in life science. In plant molecular biology, the availability of sequence data on whole genomes has enabled the reconstruction of metabolic networks. Enzymatic reactions are predicted by the sequence information. Pathways arise due to the participation of chemical compounds as substrates and products in these reactions. Although several of these comprehensive networks have been reconstructed for the genetic model plant Arabidopsis thaliana, the integration of experimental data is still challenging. Particularly the analysis of subcellular organization of plant cells limits the understanding of regulatory instances in these metabolic networks in vivo. In this study, we develop an approach for the functional integration of experimental high-throughput data into such large-scale networks. We present a subcellular metabolic network model comprising 524 metabolic intermediates and 548 metabolic interactions derived from a total of 2769 reactions. We demonstrate how to link the metabolite covariance matrix of different Arabidopsis thaliana accessions with the subcellular metabolic network model for the inverse calculation of the biochemical Jacobian, finally resulting in the calculation of a matrix which satisfies a Lyaponov equation involving a covariance matrix. In this way, differential strategies of metabolite compartmentation and involved reactions were identified in the accessions when exposed to low temperature.

  4. A network dynamics approach to chemical reaction networks

    Science.gov (United States)

    van der Schaft, A. J.; Rao, S.; Jayawardhana, B.

    2016-04-01

    A treatment of a chemical reaction network theory is given from the perspective of nonlinear network dynamics, in particular of consensus dynamics. By starting from the complex-balanced assumption, the reaction dynamics governed by mass action kinetics can be rewritten into a form which allows for a very simple derivation of a number of key results in the chemical reaction network theory, and which directly relates to the thermodynamics and port-Hamiltonian formulation of the system. Central in this formulation is the definition of a balanced Laplacian matrix on the graph of chemical complexes together with a resulting fundamental inequality. This immediately leads to the characterisation of the set of equilibria and their stability. Furthermore, the assumption of complex balancedness is revisited from the point of view of Kirchhoff's matrix tree theorem. Both the form of the dynamics and the deduced behaviour are very similar to consensus dynamics, and provide additional perspectives to the latter. Finally, using the classical idea of extending the graph of chemical complexes by a 'zero' complex, a complete steady-state stability analysis of mass action kinetics reaction networks with constant inflows and mass action kinetics outflows is given, and a unified framework is provided for structure-preserving model reduction of this important class of open reaction networks.

  5. A network dynamics approach to chemical reaction networks

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    van der Schaft, Abraham; Rao, S.; Jayawardhana, B.

    2016-01-01

    A treatment of chemical reaction network theory is given from the perspective of nonlinear network dynamics, in particular of consensus dynamics. By starting from the complex-balanced assumption the reaction dynamics governed by mass action kinetics can be rewritten into a form which allows for a

  6. Quantum Chemical Approach to Estimating the Thermodynamics of Metabolic Reactions

    OpenAIRE

    Adrian Jinich; Dmitrij Rappoport; Ian Dunn; Benjamin Sanchez-Lengeling; Roberto Olivares-Amaya; Elad Noor; Arren Bar Even; Alán Aspuru-Guzik

    2014-01-01

    Thermodynamics plays an increasingly important role in modeling and engineering metabolism. We present the first nonempirical computational method for estimating standard Gibbs reaction energies of metabolic reactions based on quantum chemistry, which can help fill in the gaps in the existing thermodynamic data. When applied to a test set of reactions from core metabolism, the quantum chemical approach is comparable in accuracy to group contribution methods for isomerization and group transfe...

  7. Noise effect in metabolic networks

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Zheng-Yan, Li; Zheng-Wei, Xie; Tong, Chen; Qi, Ouyang

    2009-01-01

    Constraint-based models such as flux balance analysis (FBA) are a powerful tool to study biological metabolic networks. Under the hypothesis that cells operate at an optimal growth rate as the result of evolution and natural selection, this model successfully predicts most cellular behaviours in growth rate. However, the model ignores the fact that cells can change their cellular metabolic states during evolution, leaving optimal metabolic states unstable. Here, we consider all the cellular processes that change metabolic states into a single term 'noise', and assume that cells change metabolic states by randomly walking in feasible solution space. By simulating a state of a cell randomly walking in the constrained solution space of metabolic networks, we found that in a noisy environment cells in optimal states tend to travel away from these points. On considering the competition between the noise effect and the growth effect in cell evolution, we found that there exists a trade-off between these two effects. As a result, the population of the cells contains different cellular metabolic states, and the population growth rate is at suboptimal states. (cross-disciplinary physics and related areas of science and technology)

  8. A method for estimation of elasticities in metabolic networks using steady state and dynamic metabolomics data and linlog kinetics

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Nikerel, I.E.; Van Winden, W.; Van Gulik, W.M.; Heijnen, J.J.

    2006-01-01

    Background: Dynamic modeling of metabolic reaction networks under in vivo conditions is a crucial step in order to obtain a better understanding of the (dis)functioning of living cells. So far dynamic metabolic models generally have been based on mechanistic rate equations which often contain so

  9. Integration of metabolomics data into metabolic networks.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Töpfer, Nadine; Kleessen, Sabrina; Nikoloski, Zoran

    2015-01-01

    Metabolite levels together with their corresponding metabolic fluxes are integrative outcomes of biochemical transformations and regulatory processes and they can be used to characterize the response of biological systems to genetic and/or environmental changes. However, while changes in transcript or to some extent protein levels can usually be traced back to one or several responsible genes, changes in fluxes and particularly changes in metabolite levels do not follow such rationale and are often the outcome of complex interactions of several components. The increasing quality and coverage of metabolomics technologies have fostered the development of computational approaches for integrating metabolic read-outs with large-scale models to predict the physiological state of a system. Constraint-based approaches, relying on the stoichiometry of the considered reactions, provide a modeling framework amenable to analyses of large-scale systems and to the integration of high-throughput data. Here we review the existing approaches that integrate metabolomics data in variants of constrained-based approaches to refine model reconstructions, to constrain flux predictions in metabolic models, and to relate network structural properties to metabolite levels. Finally, we discuss the challenges and perspectives in the developments of constraint-based modeling approaches driven by metabolomics data.

  10. Conservation Laws in Biochemical Reaction Networks

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Mahdi, Adam; Ferragut, Antoni; Valls, Claudia

    2017-01-01

    We study the existence of linear and nonlinear conservation laws in biochemical reaction networks with mass-action kinetics. It is straightforward to compute the linear conservation laws as they are related to the left null-space of the stoichiometry matrix. The nonlinear conservation laws...... are difficult to identify and have rarely been considered in the context of mass-action reaction networks. Here, using the Darboux theory of integrability, we provide necessary structural (i.e., parameterindependent) conditions on a reaction network to guarantee the existence of nonlinear conservation laws...

  11. Capturing the essence of a metabolic network: a flux balance analysis approach.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Murabito, Ettore; Simeonidis, Evangelos; Smallbone, Kieran; Swinton, Jonathan

    2009-10-07

    As genome-scale metabolic reconstructions emerge, tools to manage their size and complexity will be increasingly important. Flux balance analysis (FBA) is a constraint-based approach widely used to study the metabolic capabilities of cellular or subcellular systems. FBA problems are highly underdetermined and many different phenotypes can satisfy any set of constraints through which the metabolic system is represented. Two of the main concerns in FBA are exploring the space of solutions for a given metabolic network and finding a specific phenotype which is representative for a given task such as maximal growth rate. Here, we introduce a recursive algorithm suitable for overcoming both of these concerns. The method proposed is able to find the alternate optimal patterns of active reactions of an FBA problem and identify the minimal subnetwork able to perform a specific task as optimally as the whole. Our method represents an alternative to and an extension of other approaches conceived for exploring the space of solutions of an FBA problem. It may also be particularly helpful in defining a scaffold of reactions upon which to build up a dynamic model, when the important pathways of the system have not yet been well-defined.

  12. Markovian dynamics on complex reaction networks

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Goutsias, J., E-mail: goutsias@jhu.edu; Jenkinson, G., E-mail: jenkinson@jhu.edu

    2013-08-10

    Complex networks, comprised of individual elements that interact with each other through reaction channels, are ubiquitous across many scientific and engineering disciplines. Examples include biochemical, pharmacokinetic, epidemiological, ecological, social, neural, and multi-agent networks. A common approach to modeling such networks is by a master equation that governs the dynamic evolution of the joint probability mass function of the underlying population process and naturally leads to Markovian dynamics for such process. Due however to the nonlinear nature of most reactions and the large size of the underlying state-spaces, computation and analysis of the resulting stochastic population dynamics is a difficult task. This review article provides a coherent and comprehensive coverage of recently developed approaches and methods to tackle this problem. After reviewing a general framework for modeling Markovian reaction networks and giving specific examples, the authors present numerical and computational techniques capable of evaluating or approximating the solution of the master equation, discuss a recently developed approach for studying the stationary behavior of Markovian reaction networks using a potential energy landscape perspective, and provide an introduction to the emerging theory of thermodynamic analysis of such networks. Three representative problems of opinion formation, transcription regulation, and neural network dynamics are used as illustrative examples.

  13. Markovian dynamics on complex reaction networks

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Goutsias, J.; Jenkinson, G.

    2013-01-01

    Complex networks, comprised of individual elements that interact with each other through reaction channels, are ubiquitous across many scientific and engineering disciplines. Examples include biochemical, pharmacokinetic, epidemiological, ecological, social, neural, and multi-agent networks. A common approach to modeling such networks is by a master equation that governs the dynamic evolution of the joint probability mass function of the underlying population process and naturally leads to Markovian dynamics for such process. Due however to the nonlinear nature of most reactions and the large size of the underlying state-spaces, computation and analysis of the resulting stochastic population dynamics is a difficult task. This review article provides a coherent and comprehensive coverage of recently developed approaches and methods to tackle this problem. After reviewing a general framework for modeling Markovian reaction networks and giving specific examples, the authors present numerical and computational techniques capable of evaluating or approximating the solution of the master equation, discuss a recently developed approach for studying the stationary behavior of Markovian reaction networks using a potential energy landscape perspective, and provide an introduction to the emerging theory of thermodynamic analysis of such networks. Three representative problems of opinion formation, transcription regulation, and neural network dynamics are used as illustrative examples

  14. Modeling networks of coupled enzymatic reactions using the total quasi-steady state approximation.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Andrea Ciliberto

    2007-03-01

    Full Text Available In metabolic networks, metabolites are usually present in great excess over the enzymes that catalyze their interconversion, and describing the rates of these reactions by using the Michaelis-Menten rate law is perfectly valid. This rate law assumes that the concentration of enzyme-substrate complex (C is much less than the free substrate concentration (S0. However, in protein interaction networks, the enzymes and substrates are all proteins in comparable concentrations, and neglecting C with respect to S0 is not valid. Borghans, DeBoer, and Segel developed an alternative description of enzyme kinetics that is valid when C is comparable to S0. We extend this description, which Borghans et al. call the total quasi-steady state approximation, to networks of coupled enzymatic reactions. First, we analyze an isolated Goldbeter-Koshland switch when enzymes and substrates are present in comparable concentrations. Then, on the basis of a real example of the molecular network governing cell cycle progression, we couple two and three Goldbeter-Koshland switches together to study the effects of feedback in networks of protein kinases and phosphatases. Our analysis shows that the total quasi-steady state approximation provides an excellent kinetic formalism for protein interaction networks, because (1 it unveils the modular structure of the enzymatic reactions, (2 it suggests a simple algorithm to formulate correct kinetic equations, and (3 contrary to classical Michaelis-Menten kinetics, it succeeds in faithfully reproducing the dynamics of the network both qualitatively and quantitatively.

  15. Pathway discovery in metabolic networks by subgraph extraction.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Faust, Karoline; Dupont, Pierre; Callut, Jérôme; van Helden, Jacques

    2010-05-01

    Subgraph extraction is a powerful technique to predict pathways from biological networks and a set of query items (e.g. genes, proteins, compounds, etc.). It can be applied to a variety of different data types, such as gene expression, protein levels, operons or phylogenetic profiles. In this article, we investigate different approaches to extract relevant pathways from metabolic networks. Although these approaches have been adapted to metabolic networks, they are generic enough to be adjusted to other biological networks as well. We comparatively evaluated seven sub-network extraction approaches on 71 known metabolic pathways from Saccharomyces cerevisiae and a metabolic network obtained from MetaCyc. The best performing approach is a novel hybrid strategy, which combines a random walk-based reduction of the graph with a shortest paths-based algorithm, and which recovers the reference pathways with an accuracy of approximately 77%. Most of the presented algorithms are available as part of the network analysis tool set (NeAT). The kWalks method is released under the GPL3 license.

  16. From genomes to in silico cells via metabolic networks

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Borodina, Irina; Nielsen, Jens

    2005-01-01

    Genome-scale metabolic models are the focal point of systems biology as they allow the collection of various data types in a form suitable for mathematical analysis. High-quality metabolic networks and metabolic networks with incorporated regulation have been successfully used for the analysis...... of phenotypes from phenotypic arrays and in gene-deletion studies. They have also been used for gene expression analysis guided by metabolic network structure, leading to the identification of commonly regulated genes. Thus, genome-scale metabolic modeling currently stands out as one of the most promising...

  17. Regulation of metabolic networks by small molecule metabolites

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Kanehisa Minoru

    2007-03-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background The ability to regulate metabolism is a fundamental process in living systems. We present an analysis of one of the mechanisms by which metabolic regulation occurs: enzyme inhibition and activation by small molecules. We look at the network properties of this regulatory system and the relationship between the chemical properties of regulatory molecules. Results We find that many features of the regulatory network, such as the degree and clustering coefficient, closely match those of the underlying metabolic network. While these global features are conserved across several organisms, we do find local differences between regulation in E. coli and H. sapiens which reflect their different lifestyles. Chemical structure appears to play an important role in determining a compounds suitability for use in regulation. Chemical structure also often determines how groups of similar compounds can regulate sets of enzymes. These groups of compounds and the enzymes they regulate form modules that mirror the modules and pathways of the underlying metabolic network. We also show how knowledge of chemical structure and regulation could be used to predict regulatory interactions for drugs. Conclusion The metabolic regulatory network shares many of the global properties of the metabolic network, but often varies at the level of individual compounds. Chemical structure is a key determinant in deciding how a compound is used in regulation and for defining modules within the regulatory system.

  18. A Networks Approach to Modeling Enzymatic Reactions.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Imhof, P

    2016-01-01

    Modeling enzymatic reactions is a demanding task due to the complexity of the system, the many degrees of freedom involved and the complex, chemical, and conformational transitions associated with the reaction. Consequently, enzymatic reactions are not determined by precisely one reaction pathway. Hence, it is beneficial to obtain a comprehensive picture of possible reaction paths and competing mechanisms. By combining individually generated intermediate states and chemical transition steps a network of such pathways can be constructed. Transition networks are a discretized representation of a potential energy landscape consisting of a multitude of reaction pathways connecting the end states of the reaction. The graph structure of the network allows an easy identification of the energetically most favorable pathways as well as a number of alternative routes. © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  19. Construction and simulation of the Bradyrhizobium diazoefficiens USDA110 metabolic network: a comparison between free-living and symbiotic states.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Yang, Yi; Hu, Xiao-Pan; Ma, Bin-Guang

    2017-02-28

    Bradyrhizobium diazoefficiens is a rhizobium able to convert atmospheric nitrogen into ammonium by establishing mutualistic symbiosis with soybean. It has been recognized as an important parent strain for microbial agents and is widely applied in agricultural and environmental fields. In order to study the metabolic properties of symbiotic nitrogen fixation and the differences between a free-living cell and a symbiotic bacteroid, a genome-scale metabolic network of B. diazoefficiens USDA110 was constructed and analyzed. The metabolic network, iYY1101, contains 1031 reactions, 661 metabolites, and 1101 genes in total. Metabolic models reflecting free-living and symbiotic states were determined by defining the corresponding objective functions and substrate input sets, and were further constrained by high-throughput transcriptomic and proteomic data. Constraint-based flux analysis was used to compare the metabolic capacities and the effects on the metabolic targets of genes and reactions between the two physiological states. The results showed that a free-living rhizobium possesses a steady state flux distribution for sustaining a complex supply of biomass precursors while a symbiotic bacteroid maintains a relatively condensed one adapted to nitrogen-fixation. Our metabolic models may serve as a promising platform for better understanding the symbiotic nitrogen fixation of this species.

  20. Integration of genome-scale metabolic networks into whole-body PBPK models shows phenotype-specific cases of drug-induced metabolic perturbation.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cordes, Henrik; Thiel, Christoph; Baier, Vanessa; Blank, Lars M; Kuepfer, Lars

    2018-01-01

    Drug-induced perturbations of the endogenous metabolic network are a potential root cause of cellular toxicity. A mechanistic understanding of such unwanted side effects during drug therapy is therefore vital for patient safety. The comprehensive assessment of such drug-induced injuries requires the simultaneous consideration of both drug exposure at the whole-body and resulting biochemical responses at the cellular level. We here present a computational multi-scale workflow that combines whole-body physiologically based pharmacokinetic (PBPK) models and organ-specific genome-scale metabolic network (GSMN) models through shared reactions of the xenobiotic metabolism. The applicability of the proposed workflow is illustrated for isoniazid, a first-line antibacterial agent against Mycobacterium tuberculosis , which is known to cause idiosyncratic drug-induced liver injuries (DILI). We combined GSMN models of a human liver with N-acetyl transferase 2 (NAT2)-phenotype-specific PBPK models of isoniazid. The combined PBPK-GSMN models quantitatively describe isoniazid pharmacokinetics, as well as intracellular responses, and changes in the exometabolome in a human liver following isoniazid administration. Notably, intracellular and extracellular responses identified with the PBPK-GSMN models are in line with experimental and clinical findings. Moreover, the drug-induced metabolic perturbations are distributed and attenuated in the metabolic network in a phenotype-dependent manner. Our simulation results show that a simultaneous consideration of both drug pharmacokinetics at the whole-body and metabolism at the cellular level is mandatory to explain drug-induced injuries at the patient level. The proposed workflow extends our mechanistic understanding of the biochemistry underlying adverse events and may be used to prevent drug-induced injuries in the future.

  1. Multilayer Network Analysis of Nuclear Reactions

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zhu, Liang; Ma, Yu-Gang; Chen, Qu; Han, Ding-Ding

    2016-08-01

    The nuclear reaction network is usually studied via precise calculation of differential equation sets, and much research interest has been focused on the characteristics of nuclides, such as half-life and size limit. In this paper, however, we adopt the methods from both multilayer and reaction networks, and obtain a distinctive view by mapping all the nuclear reactions in JINA REACLIB database into a directed network with 4 layers: neutron, proton, 4He and the remainder. The layer names correspond to reaction types decided by the currency particles consumed. This combined approach reveals that, in the remainder layer, the β-stability has high correlation with node degree difference and overlapping coefficient. Moreover, when reaction rates are considered as node strength, we find that, at lower temperatures, nuclide half-life scales reciprocally with its out-strength. The connection between physical properties and topological characteristics may help to explore the boundary of the nuclide chart.

  2. Modeling the Metabolism of Arabidopsis thaliana: Application of Network Decomposition and Network Reduction in the Context of Petri Nets

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Ina Koch

    2017-06-01

    Full Text Available Motivation:Arabidopsis thaliana is a well-established model system for the analysis of the basic physiological and metabolic pathways of plants. Nevertheless, the system is not yet fully understood, although many mechanisms are described, and information for many processes exists. However, the combination and interpretation of the large amount of biological data remain a big challenge, not only because data sets for metabolic paths are still incomplete. Moreover, they are often inconsistent, because they are coming from different experiments of various scales, regarding, for example, accuracy and/or significance. Here, theoretical modeling is powerful to formulate hypotheses for pathways and the dynamics of the metabolism, even if the biological data are incomplete. To develop reliable mathematical models they have to be proven for consistency. This is still a challenging task because many verification techniques fail already for middle-sized models. Consequently, new methods, like decomposition methods or reduction approaches, are developed to circumvent this problem.Methods: We present a new semi-quantitative mathematical model of the metabolism of Arabidopsis thaliana. We used the Petri net formalism to express the complex reaction system in a mathematically unique manner. To verify the model for correctness and consistency we applied concepts of network decomposition and network reduction such as transition invariants, common transition pairs, and invariant transition pairs.Results: We formulated the core metabolism of Arabidopsis thaliana based on recent knowledge from literature, including the Calvin cycle, glycolysis and citric acid cycle, glyoxylate cycle, urea cycle, sucrose synthesis, and the starch metabolism. By applying network decomposition and reduction techniques at steady-state conditions, we suggest a straightforward mathematical modeling process. We demonstrate that potential steady-state pathways exist, which provide the

  3. Hybrid dynamic modeling of Escherichia coli central metabolic network combining Michaelis–Menten and approximate kinetic equations

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Costa, Rafael S.; Machado, Daniel; Rocha, Isabel

    2010-01-01

    , represent nowadays the limiting factor in the construction of such models. In this study, we compare four alternative modeling approaches based on Michaelis–Menten kinetics for the bi-molecular reactions and different types of simplified rate equations for the remaining reactions (generalized mass action......The construction of dynamic metabolic models at reaction network level requires the use of mechanistic enzymatic rate equations that comprise a large number of parameters. The lack of knowledge on these equations and the difficulty in the experimental identification of their associated parameters...

  4. A text-mining system for extracting metabolic reactions from full-text articles.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Czarnecki, Jan; Nobeli, Irene; Smith, Adrian M; Shepherd, Adrian J

    2012-07-23

    Increasingly biological text mining research is focusing on the extraction of complex relationships relevant to the construction and curation of biological networks and pathways. However, one important category of pathway - metabolic pathways - has been largely neglected.Here we present a relatively simple method for extracting metabolic reaction information from free text that scores different permutations of assigned entities (enzymes and metabolites) within a given sentence based on the presence and location of stemmed keywords. This method extends an approach that has proved effective in the context of the extraction of protein-protein interactions. When evaluated on a set of manually-curated metabolic pathways using standard performance criteria, our method performs surprisingly well. Precision and recall rates are comparable to those previously achieved for the well-known protein-protein interaction extraction task. We conclude that automated metabolic pathway construction is more tractable than has often been assumed, and that (as in the case of protein-protein interaction extraction) relatively simple text-mining approaches can prove surprisingly effective. It is hoped that these results will provide an impetus to further research and act as a useful benchmark for judging the performance of more sophisticated methods that are yet to be developed.

  5. Enumeration of minimal stoichiometric precursor sets in metabolic networks.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Andrade, Ricardo; Wannagat, Martin; Klein, Cecilia C; Acuña, Vicente; Marchetti-Spaccamela, Alberto; Milreu, Paulo V; Stougie, Leen; Sagot, Marie-France

    2016-01-01

    What an organism needs at least from its environment to produce a set of metabolites, e.g. target(s) of interest and/or biomass, has been called a minimal precursor set. Early approaches to enumerate all minimal precursor sets took into account only the topology of the metabolic network (topological precursor sets). Due to cycles and the stoichiometric values of the reactions, it is often not possible to produce the target(s) from a topological precursor set in the sense that there is no feasible flux. Although considering the stoichiometry makes the problem harder, it enables to obtain biologically reasonable precursor sets that we call stoichiometric. Recently a method to enumerate all minimal stoichiometric precursor sets was proposed in the literature. The relationship between topological and stoichiometric precursor sets had however not yet been studied. Such relationship between topological and stoichiometric precursor sets is highlighted. We also present two algorithms that enumerate all minimal stoichiometric precursor sets. The first one is of theoretical interest only and is based on the above mentioned relationship. The second approach solves a series of mixed integer linear programming problems. We compared the computed minimal precursor sets to experimentally obtained growth media of several Escherichia coli strains using genome-scale metabolic networks. The results show that the second approach efficiently enumerates minimal precursor sets taking stoichiometry into account, and allows for broad in silico studies of strains or species interactions that may help to understand e.g. pathotype and niche-specific metabolic capabilities. sasita is written in Java, uses cplex as LP solver and can be downloaded together with all networks and input files used in this paper at http://www.sasita.gforge.inria.fr.

  6. Genome-scale reconstruction of the Streptococcus pyogenes M49 metabolic network reveals growth requirements and indicates potential drug targets.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Levering, Jennifer; Fiedler, Tomas; Sieg, Antje; van Grinsven, Koen W A; Hering, Silvio; Veith, Nadine; Olivier, Brett G; Klett, Lara; Hugenholtz, Jeroen; Teusink, Bas; Kreikemeyer, Bernd; Kummer, Ursula

    2016-08-20

    Genome-scale metabolic models comprise stoichiometric relations between metabolites, as well as associations between genes and metabolic reactions and facilitate the analysis of metabolism. We computationally reconstructed the metabolic network of the lactic acid bacterium Streptococcus pyogenes M49. Initially, we based the reconstruction on genome annotations and already existing and curated metabolic networks of Bacillus subtilis, Escherichia coli, Lactobacillus plantarum and Lactococcus lactis. This initial draft was manually curated with the final reconstruction accounting for 480 genes associated with 576 reactions and 558 metabolites. In order to constrain the model further, we performed growth experiments of wild type and arcA deletion strains of S. pyogenes M49 in a chemically defined medium and calculated nutrient uptake and production fluxes. We additionally performed amino acid auxotrophy experiments to test the consistency of the model. The established genome-scale model can be used to understand the growth requirements of the human pathogen S. pyogenes and define optimal and suboptimal conditions, but also to describe differences and similarities between S. pyogenes and related lactic acid bacteria such as L. lactis in order to find strategies to reduce the growth of the pathogen and propose drug targets. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  7. TIGER: Toolbox for integrating genome-scale metabolic models, expression data, and transcriptional regulatory networks

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Jensen Paul A

    2011-09-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background Several methods have been developed for analyzing genome-scale models of metabolism and transcriptional regulation. Many of these methods, such as Flux Balance Analysis, use constrained optimization to predict relationships between metabolic flux and the genes that encode and regulate enzyme activity. Recently, mixed integer programming has been used to encode these gene-protein-reaction (GPR relationships into a single optimization problem, but these techniques are often of limited generality and lack a tool for automating the conversion of rules to a coupled regulatory/metabolic model. Results We present TIGER, a Toolbox for Integrating Genome-scale Metabolism, Expression, and Regulation. TIGER converts a series of generalized, Boolean or multilevel rules into a set of mixed integer inequalities. The package also includes implementations of existing algorithms to integrate high-throughput expression data with genome-scale models of metabolism and transcriptional regulation. We demonstrate how TIGER automates the coupling of a genome-scale metabolic model with GPR logic and models of transcriptional regulation, thereby serving as a platform for algorithm development and large-scale metabolic analysis. Additionally, we demonstrate how TIGER's algorithms can be used to identify inconsistencies and improve existing models of transcriptional regulation with examples from the reconstructed transcriptional regulatory network of Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Conclusion The TIGER package provides a consistent platform for algorithm development and extending existing genome-scale metabolic models with regulatory networks and high-throughput data.

  8. Metabolic network model guided engineering ethylmalonyl-CoA pathway to improve ascomycin production in Streptomyces hygroscopicus var. ascomyceticus.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wang, Junhua; Wang, Cheng; Song, Kejing; Wen, Jianping

    2017-10-03

    Ascomycin is a 23-membered polyketide macrolide with high immunosuppressant and antifungal activity. As the lower production in bio-fermentation, global metabolic analysis is required to further explore its biosynthetic network and determine the key limiting steps for rationally engineering. To achieve this goal, an engineering approach guided by a metabolic network model was implemented to better understand ascomycin biosynthesis and improve its production. The metabolic conservation of Streptomyces species was first investigated by comparing the metabolic enzymes of Streptomyces coelicolor A3(2) with those of 31 Streptomyces strains, the results showed that more than 72% of the examined proteins had high sequence similarity with counterparts in every surveyed strain. And it was found that metabolic reactions are more highly conserved than the enzymes themselves because of its lower diversity of metabolic functions than that of genes. The main source of the observed metabolic differences was from the diversity of secondary metabolism. According to the high conservation of primary metabolic reactions in Streptomyces species, the metabolic network model of Streptomyces hygroscopicus var. ascomyceticus was constructed based on the latest reported metabolic model of S. coelicolor A3(2) and validated experimentally. By coupling with flux balance analysis and using minimization of metabolic adjustment algorithm, potential targets for ascomycin overproduction were predicted. Since several of the preferred targets were highly associated with ethylmalonyl-CoA biosynthesis, two target genes hcd (encoding 3-hydroxybutyryl-CoA dehydrogenase) and ccr (encoding crotonyl-CoA carboxylase/reductase) were selected for overexpression in S. hygroscopicus var. ascomyceticus FS35. Both the mutants HA-Hcd and HA-Ccr showed higher ascomycin titer, which was consistent with the model predictions. Furthermore, the combined effects of the two genes were evaluated and the strain HA

  9. Constraint based modeling of metabolism allows finding metabolic cancer hallmarks and identifying personalized therapeutic windows.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bordel, Sergio

    2018-04-13

    In order to choose optimal personalized anticancer treatments, transcriptomic data should be analyzed within the frame of biological networks. The best known human biological network (in terms of the interactions between its different components) is metabolism. Cancer cells have been known to have specific metabolic features for a long time and currently there is a growing interest in characterizing new cancer specific metabolic hallmarks. In this article it is presented a method to find personalized therapeutic windows using RNA-seq data and Genome Scale Metabolic Models. This method is implemented in the python library, pyTARG. Our predictions showed that the most anticancer selective (affecting 27 out of 34 considered cancer cell lines and only 1 out of 6 healthy mesenchymal stem cell lines) single metabolic reactions are those involved in cholesterol biosynthesis. Excluding cholesterol biosynthesis, all the considered cell lines can be selectively affected by targeting different combinations (from 1 to 5 reactions) of only 18 metabolic reactions, which suggests that a small subset of drugs or siRNAs combined in patient specific manners could be at the core of metabolism based personalized treatments.

  10. Open complex-balanced mass action chemical reaction networks

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Rao, Shodhan; van der Schaft, Arjan; Jayawardhana, Bayu

    We consider open chemical reaction networks, i.e. ones with inflows and outflows. We assume that all the inflows to the network are constant and all outflows obey the mass action kinetics rate law. We define a complex-balanced open reaction network as one that admits a complex-balanced steady state.

  11. Find_tfSBP: find thermodynamics-feasible and smallest balanced pathways with high yield from large-scale metabolic networks.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Xu, Zixiang; Sun, Jibin; Wu, Qiaqing; Zhu, Dunming

    2017-12-11

    Biologically meaningful metabolic pathways are important references in the design of industrial bacterium. At present, constraint-based method is the only way to model and simulate a genome-scale metabolic network under steady-state criteria. Due to the inadequate assumption of the relationship in gene-enzyme-reaction as one-to-one unique association, computational difficulty or ignoring the yield from substrate to product, previous pathway finding approaches can't be effectively applied to find out the high yield pathways that are mass balanced in stoichiometry. In addition, the shortest pathways may not be the pathways with high yield. At the same time, a pathway, which exists in stoichiometry, may not be feasible in thermodynamics. By using mixed integer programming strategy, we put forward an algorithm to identify all the smallest balanced pathways which convert the source compound to the target compound in large-scale metabolic networks. The resulting pathways by our method can finely satisfy the stoichiometric constraints and non-decomposability condition. Especially, the functions of high yield and thermodynamics feasibility have been considered in our approach. This tool is tailored to direct the metabolic engineering practice to enlarge the metabolic potentials of industrial strains by integrating the extensive metabolic network information built from systems biology dataset.

  12. Systematic construction of kinetic models from genome-scale metabolic networks.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Natalie J Stanford

    Full Text Available The quantitative effects of environmental and genetic perturbations on metabolism can be studied in silico using kinetic models. We present a strategy for large-scale model construction based on a logical layering of data such as reaction fluxes, metabolite concentrations, and kinetic constants. The resulting models contain realistic standard rate laws and plausible parameters, adhere to the laws of thermodynamics, and reproduce a predefined steady state. These features have not been simultaneously achieved by previous workflows. We demonstrate the advantages and limitations of the workflow by translating the yeast consensus metabolic network into a kinetic model. Despite crudely selected data, the model shows realistic control behaviour, a stable dynamic, and realistic response to perturbations in extracellular glucose concentrations. The paper concludes by outlining how new data can continuously be fed into the workflow and how iterative model building can assist in directing experiments.

  13. Systematic Construction of Kinetic Models from Genome-Scale Metabolic Networks

    Science.gov (United States)

    Smallbone, Kieran; Klipp, Edda; Mendes, Pedro; Liebermeister, Wolfram

    2013-01-01

    The quantitative effects of environmental and genetic perturbations on metabolism can be studied in silico using kinetic models. We present a strategy for large-scale model construction based on a logical layering of data such as reaction fluxes, metabolite concentrations, and kinetic constants. The resulting models contain realistic standard rate laws and plausible parameters, adhere to the laws of thermodynamics, and reproduce a predefined steady state. These features have not been simultaneously achieved by previous workflows. We demonstrate the advantages and limitations of the workflow by translating the yeast consensus metabolic network into a kinetic model. Despite crudely selected data, the model shows realistic control behaviour, a stable dynamic, and realistic response to perturbations in extracellular glucose concentrations. The paper concludes by outlining how new data can continuously be fed into the workflow and how iterative model building can assist in directing experiments. PMID:24324546

  14. Extracting reaction networks from databases-opening Pandora's box.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Fearnley, Liam G; Davis, Melissa J; Ragan, Mark A; Nielsen, Lars K

    2014-11-01

    Large quantities of information describing the mechanisms of biological pathways continue to be collected in publicly available databases. At the same time, experiments have increased in scale, and biologists increasingly use pathways defined in online databases to interpret the results of experiments and generate hypotheses. Emerging computational techniques that exploit the rich biological information captured in reaction systems require formal standardized descriptions of pathways to extract these reaction networks and avoid the alternative: time-consuming and largely manual literature-based network reconstruction. Here, we systematically evaluate the effects of commonly used knowledge representations on the seemingly simple task of extracting a reaction network describing signal transduction from a pathway database. We show that this process is in fact surprisingly difficult, and the pathway representations adopted by various knowledge bases have dramatic consequences for reaction network extraction, connectivity, capture of pathway crosstalk and in the modelling of cell-cell interactions. Researchers constructing computational models built from automatically extracted reaction networks must therefore consider the issues we outline in this review to maximize the value of existing pathway knowledge. © The Author 2013. Published by Oxford University Press.

  15. Metabolic networks in epilepsy by MR spectroscopic imaging.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Pan, J W; Spencer, D D; Kuzniecky, R; Duckrow, R B; Hetherington, H; Spencer, S S

    2012-12-01

    The concept of an epileptic network has long been suggested from both animal and human studies of epilepsy. Based on the common observation that the MR spectroscopic imaging measure of NAA/Cr is sensitive to neuronal function and injury, we use this parameter to assess for the presence of a metabolic network in mesial temporal lobe epilepsy (MTLE) patients. A multivariate factor analysis is performed with controls and MTLE patients, using NAA/Cr measures from 12 loci: the bilateral hippocampi, thalami, basal ganglia, and insula. The factor analysis determines which and to what extent these loci are metabolically covarying. We extract two independent factors that explain the data's variability in control and MTLE patients. In controls, these factors characterize a 'thalamic' and 'dominant subcortical' function. The MTLE patients also exhibit a 'thalamic' factor, in addition to a second factor involving the ipsilateral insula and bilateral basal ganglia. These data suggest that MTLE patients demonstrate a metabolic network that involves the thalami, also seen in controls. The MTLE patients also display a second set of metabolically covarying regions that may be a manifestation of the epileptic network that characterizes limbic seizure propagation. © 2012 John Wiley & Sons A/S.

  16. On the Complexity of Reconstructing Chemical Reaction Networks

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Fagerberg, Rolf; Flamm, Christoph; Merkle, Daniel

    2013-01-01

    The analysis of the structure of chemical reaction networks is crucial for a better understanding of chemical processes. Such networks are well described as hypergraphs. However, due to the available methods, analyses regarding network properties are typically made on standard graphs derived from...... the full hypergraph description, e.g. on the so-called species and reaction graphs. However, a reconstruction of the underlying hypergraph from these graphs is not necessarily unique. In this paper, we address the problem of reconstructing a hypergraph from its species and reaction graph and show NP...

  17. Antimalarial drug targets in Plasmodium falciparum predicted by stage-specific metabolic network analysis

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Huthmacher Carola

    2010-08-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background Despite enormous efforts to combat malaria the disease still afflicts up to half a billion people each year of which more than one million die. Currently no approved vaccine is available and resistances to antimalarials are widely spread. Hence, new antimalarial drugs are urgently needed. Results Here, we present a computational analysis of the metabolism of Plasmodium falciparum, the deadliest malaria pathogen. We assembled a compartmentalized metabolic model and predicted life cycle stage specific metabolism with the help of a flux balance approach that integrates gene expression data. Predicted metabolite exchanges between parasite and host were found to be in good accordance with experimental findings when the parasite's metabolic network was embedded into that of its host (erythrocyte. Knock-out simulations identified 307 indispensable metabolic reactions within the parasite. 35 out of 57 experimentally demonstrated essential enzymes were recovered and another 16 enzymes, if additionally the assumption was made that nutrient uptake from the host cell is limited and all reactions catalyzed by the inhibited enzyme are blocked. This predicted set of putative drug targets, shown to be enriched with true targets by a factor of at least 2.75, was further analyzed with respect to homology to human enzymes, functional similarity to therapeutic targets in other organisms and their predicted potency for prophylaxis and disease treatment. Conclusions The results suggest that the set of essential enzymes predicted by our flux balance approach represents a promising starting point for further drug development.

  18. Graphical reduction of reaction networks by linear elimination of species

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Saez Cornellana, Meritxell; Wiuf, Carsten; Feliu, Elisenda

    2017-01-01

    We give a graphically based procedure to reduce a reaction network to a smaller reaction network with fewer species after linear elimination of a set of noninteracting species. We give a description of the reduced reaction network, its kinetics and conservations laws, and explore properties...

  19. MetRxn: a knowledgebase of metabolites and reactions spanning metabolic models and databases

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Kumar Akhil

    2012-01-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background Increasingly, metabolite and reaction information is organized in the form of genome-scale metabolic reconstructions that describe the reaction stoichiometry, directionality, and gene to protein to reaction associations. A key bottleneck in the pace of reconstruction of new, high-quality metabolic models is the inability to directly make use of metabolite/reaction information from biological databases or other models due to incompatibilities in content representation (i.e., metabolites with multiple names across databases and models, stoichiometric errors such as elemental or charge imbalances, and incomplete atomistic detail (e.g., use of generic R-group or non-explicit specification of stereo-specificity. Description MetRxn is a knowledgebase that includes standardized metabolite and reaction descriptions by integrating information from BRENDA, KEGG, MetaCyc, Reactome.org and 44 metabolic models into a single unified data set. All metabolite entries have matched synonyms, resolved protonation states, and are linked to unique structures. All reaction entries are elementally and charge balanced. This is accomplished through the use of a workflow of lexicographic, phonetic, and structural comparison algorithms. MetRxn allows for the download of standardized versions of existing genome-scale metabolic models and the use of metabolic information for the rapid reconstruction of new ones. Conclusions The standardization in description allows for the direct comparison of the metabolite and reaction content between metabolic models and databases and the exhaustive prospecting of pathways for biotechnological production. This ever-growing dataset currently consists of over 76,000 metabolites participating in more than 72,000 reactions (including unresolved entries. MetRxn is hosted on a web-based platform that uses relational database models (MySQL.

  20. DRUM: a new framework for metabolic modeling under non-balanced growth. Application to the carbon metabolism of unicellular microalgae.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Baroukh, Caroline; Muñoz-Tamayo, Rafael; Steyer, Jean-Philippe; Bernard, Olivier

    2014-01-01

    Metabolic modeling is a powerful tool to understand, predict and optimize bioprocesses, particularly when they imply intracellular molecules of interest. Unfortunately, the use of metabolic models for time varying metabolic fluxes is hampered by the lack of experimental data required to define and calibrate the kinetic reaction rates of the metabolic pathways. For this reason, metabolic models are often used under the balanced growth hypothesis. However, for some processes such as the photoautotrophic metabolism of microalgae, the balanced-growth assumption appears to be unreasonable because of the synchronization of their circadian cycle on the daily light. Yet, understanding microalgae metabolism is necessary to optimize the production yield of bioprocesses based on this microorganism, as for example production of third-generation biofuels. In this paper, we propose DRUM, a new dynamic metabolic modeling framework that handles the non-balanced growth condition and hence accumulation of intracellular metabolites. The first stage of the approach consists in splitting the metabolic network into sub-networks describing reactions which are spatially close, and which are assumed to satisfy balanced growth condition. The left metabolites interconnecting the sub-networks behave dynamically. Then, thanks to Elementary Flux Mode analysis, each sub-network is reduced to macroscopic reactions, for which simple kinetics are assumed. Finally, an Ordinary Differential Equation system is obtained to describe substrate consumption, biomass production, products excretion and accumulation of some internal metabolites. DRUM was applied to the accumulation of lipids and carbohydrates of the microalgae Tisochrysis lutea under day/night cycles. The resulting model describes accurately experimental data obtained in day/night conditions. It efficiently predicts the accumulation and consumption of lipids and carbohydrates.

  1. DRUM: a new framework for metabolic modeling under non-balanced growth. Application to the carbon metabolism of unicellular microalgae.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Caroline Baroukh

    Full Text Available Metabolic modeling is a powerful tool to understand, predict and optimize bioprocesses, particularly when they imply intracellular molecules of interest. Unfortunately, the use of metabolic models for time varying metabolic fluxes is hampered by the lack of experimental data required to define and calibrate the kinetic reaction rates of the metabolic pathways. For this reason, metabolic models are often used under the balanced growth hypothesis. However, for some processes such as the photoautotrophic metabolism of microalgae, the balanced-growth assumption appears to be unreasonable because of the synchronization of their circadian cycle on the daily light. Yet, understanding microalgae metabolism is necessary to optimize the production yield of bioprocesses based on this microorganism, as for example production of third-generation biofuels. In this paper, we propose DRUM, a new dynamic metabolic modeling framework that handles the non-balanced growth condition and hence accumulation of intracellular metabolites. The first stage of the approach consists in splitting the metabolic network into sub-networks describing reactions which are spatially close, and which are assumed to satisfy balanced growth condition. The left metabolites interconnecting the sub-networks behave dynamically. Then, thanks to Elementary Flux Mode analysis, each sub-network is reduced to macroscopic reactions, for which simple kinetics are assumed. Finally, an Ordinary Differential Equation system is obtained to describe substrate consumption, biomass production, products excretion and accumulation of some internal metabolites. DRUM was applied to the accumulation of lipids and carbohydrates of the microalgae Tisochrysis lutea under day/night cycles. The resulting model describes accurately experimental data obtained in day/night conditions. It efficiently predicts the accumulation and consumption of lipids and carbohydrates.

  2. Structural parameter identifiability analysis for dynamic reaction networks

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Davidescu, Florin Paul; Jørgensen, Sten Bay

    2008-01-01

    method based on Lie derivatives. The proposed systematic two phase methodology is illustrated on a mass action based model for an enzymatically catalyzed reaction pathway network where only a limited set of variables is measured. The methodology clearly pinpoints the structurally identifiable parameters...... where for a given set of measured variables it is desirable to investigate which parameters may be estimated prior to spending computational effort on the actual estimation. This contribution addresses the structural parameter identifiability problem for the typical case of reaction network models....... The proposed analysis is performed in two phases. The first phase determines the structurally identifiable reaction rates based on reaction network stoichiometry. The second phase assesses the structural parameter identifiability of the specific kinetic rate expressions using a generating series expansion...

  3. Consumer Activities and Reactions to Social Network Marketing

    OpenAIRE

    Bistra Vassileva

    2017-01-01

    The purpose of this paper is to understand consumer behavioural models with respect to their reactions to social network marketing. Theoretical background is focused on online and social network usage, motivations and behaviour. The research goal is to explore consumer reactions to the exposure of social network marketing based on the following criteria: level of brand engagement, word-of-mouth (WOM) referral behaviour, and purchase intentions. Consumers are investigated ...

  4. Managing uncertainty in metabolic network structure and improving predictions using EnsembleFBA.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Matthew B Biggs

    2017-03-01

    Full Text Available Genome-scale metabolic network reconstructions (GENREs are repositories of knowledge about the metabolic processes that occur in an organism. GENREs have been used to discover and interpret metabolic functions, and to engineer novel network structures. A major barrier preventing more widespread use of GENREs, particularly to study non-model organisms, is the extensive time required to produce a high-quality GENRE. Many automated approaches have been developed which reduce this time requirement, but automatically-reconstructed draft GENREs still require curation before useful predictions can be made. We present a novel approach to the analysis of GENREs which improves the predictive capabilities of draft GENREs by representing many alternative network structures, all equally consistent with available data, and generating predictions from this ensemble. This ensemble approach is compatible with many reconstruction methods. We refer to this new approach as Ensemble Flux Balance Analysis (EnsembleFBA. We validate EnsembleFBA by predicting growth and gene essentiality in the model organism Pseudomonas aeruginosa UCBPP-PA14. We demonstrate how EnsembleFBA can be included in a systems biology workflow by predicting essential genes in six Streptococcus species and mapping the essential genes to small molecule ligands from DrugBank. We found that some metabolic subsystems contributed disproportionately to the set of predicted essential reactions in a way that was unique to each Streptococcus species, leading to species-specific outcomes from small molecule interactions. Through our analyses of P. aeruginosa and six Streptococci, we show that ensembles increase the quality of predictions without drastically increasing reconstruction time, thus making GENRE approaches more practical for applications which require predictions for many non-model organisms. All of our functions and accompanying example code are available in an open online repository.

  5. Metabolic Network Topology Reveals Transcriptional Regulatory Signatures of Type 2 Diabetes

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Zelezniak, Aleksej; Pers, Tune Hannes; Pinho Soares, Simao Pedro

    2010-01-01

    mechanisms underlying these transcriptional changes and their impact on the cellular metabolic phenotype is a challenging task due to the complexity of transcriptional regulation and the highly interconnected nature of the metabolic network. In this study we integrate skeletal muscle gene expression datasets...... with human metabolic network reconstructions to identify key metabolic regulatory features of T2DM. These features include reporter metabolites—metabolites with significant collective transcriptional response in the associated enzyme-coding genes, and transcription factors with significant enrichment...... factor regulatory network connecting several parts of metabolism. The identified transcription factors include members of the CREB, NRF1 and PPAR family, among others, and represent regulatory targets for further experimental analysis. Overall, our results provide a holistic picture of key metabolic...

  6. Coordinations between gene modules control the operation of plant amino acid metabolic networks

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Galili Gad

    2009-01-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background Being sessile organisms, plants should adjust their metabolism to dynamic changes in their environment. Such adjustments need particular coordination in branched metabolic networks in which a given metabolite can be converted into multiple other metabolites via different enzymatic chains. In the present report, we developed a novel "Gene Coordination" bioinformatics approach and use it to elucidate adjustable transcriptional interactions of two branched amino acid metabolic networks in plants in response to environmental stresses, using publicly available microarray results. Results Using our "Gene Coordination" approach, we have identified in Arabidopsis plants two oppositely regulated groups of "highly coordinated" genes within the branched Asp-family network of Arabidopsis plants, which metabolizes the amino acids Lys, Met, Thr, Ile and Gly, as well as a single group of "highly coordinated" genes within the branched aromatic amino acid metabolic network, which metabolizes the amino acids Trp, Phe and Tyr. These genes possess highly coordinated adjustable negative and positive expression responses to various stress cues, which apparently regulate adjustable metabolic shifts between competing branches of these networks. We also provide evidence implying that these highly coordinated genes are central to impose intra- and inter-network interactions between the Asp-family and aromatic amino acid metabolic networks as well as differential system interactions with other growth promoting and stress-associated genome-wide genes. Conclusion Our novel Gene Coordination elucidates that branched amino acid metabolic networks in plants are regulated by specific groups of highly coordinated genes that possess adjustable intra-network, inter-network and genome-wide transcriptional interactions. We also hypothesize that such transcriptional interactions enable regulatory metabolic adjustments needed for adaptation to the stresses.

  7. Assessment of nitric oxide (NO) redox reactions contribution to nitrous oxide (N2 O) formation during nitrification using a multispecies metabolic network model.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Perez-Garcia, Octavio; Chandran, Kartik; Villas-Boas, Silas G; Singhal, Naresh

    2016-05-01

    Over the coming decades nitrous oxide (N2O) is expected to become a dominant greenhouse gas and atmospheric ozone depleting substance. In wastewater treatment systems, N2O is majorly produced by nitrifying microbes through biochemical reduction of nitrite (NO2(-)) and nitric oxide (NO). However it is unknown if the amount of N2O formed is affected by alternative NO redox reactions catalyzed by oxidative nitrite oxidoreductase (NirK), cytochromes (i.e., P460 [CytP460] and 554 [Cyt554 ]) and flavohemoglobins (Hmp) in ammonia- and nitrite-oxidizing bacteria (AOB and NOB, respectively). In this study, a mathematical model is developed to assess how N2O formation is affected by such alternative nitrogen redox transformations. The developed multispecies metabolic network model captures the nitrogen respiratory pathways inferred from genomes of eight AOB and NOB species. The performance of model variants, obtained as different combinations of active NO redox reactions, was assessed against nine experimental datasets for nitrifying cultures producing N2O at different concentration of electron donor and acceptor. Model predicted metabolic fluxes show that only variants that included NO oxidation to NO2(-) by CytP460 and Hmp in AOB gave statistically similar estimates to observed production rates of N2O, NO, NO2(-) and nitrate (NO3(-)), together with fractions of AOB and NOB species in biomass. Simulations showed that NO oxidation to NO2(-) decreased N2O formation by 60% without changing culture's NO2(-) production rate. Model variants including NO reduction to N2O by Cyt554 and cNor in NOB did not improve the accuracy of experimental datasets estimates, suggesting null N2O production by NOB during nitrification. Finally, the analysis shows that in nitrifying cultures transitioning from dissolved oxygen levels above 3.8 ± 0.38 to <1.5 ± 0.8 mg/L, NOB cells can oxidize the NO produced by AOB through reactions catalyzed by oxidative NirK. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

  8. Modular verification of chemical reaction network encodings via serializability analysis

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lakin, Matthew R.; Stefanovic, Darko; Phillips, Andrew

    2015-01-01

    Chemical reaction networks are a powerful means of specifying the intended behaviour of synthetic biochemical systems. A high-level formal specification, expressed as a chemical reaction network, may be compiled into a lower-level encoding, which can be directly implemented in wet chemistry and may itself be expressed as a chemical reaction network. Here we present conditions under which a lower-level encoding correctly emulates the sequential dynamics of a high-level chemical reaction network. We require that encodings are transactional, such that their execution is divided by a “commit reaction” that irreversibly separates the reactant-consuming phase of the encoding from the product-generating phase. We also impose restrictions on the sharing of species between reaction encodings, based on a notion of “extra tolerance”, which defines species that may be shared between encodings without enabling unwanted reactions. Our notion of correctness is serializability of interleaved reaction encodings, and if all reaction encodings satisfy our correctness properties then we can infer that the global dynamics of the system are correct. This allows us to infer correctness of any system constructed using verified encodings. As an example, we show how this approach may be used to verify two- and four-domain DNA strand displacement encodings of chemical reaction networks, and we generalize our result to the limit where the populations of helper species are unlimited. PMID:27325906

  9. Topological and kinetic determinants of the modal matrices of dynamic models of metabolism.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Bin Du

    Full Text Available Large-scale kinetic models of metabolism are becoming increasingly comprehensive and accurate. A key challenge is to understand the biochemical basis of the dynamic properties of these models. Linear analysis methods are well-established as useful tools for characterizing the dynamic response of metabolic networks. Central to linear analysis methods are two key matrices: the Jacobian matrix (J and the modal matrix (M-1 arising from its eigendecomposition. The modal matrix M-1 contains dynamically independent motions of the kinetic model near a reference state, and it is sparse in practice for metabolic networks. However, connecting the structure of M-1 to the kinetic properties of the underlying reactions is non-trivial. In this study, we analyze the relationship between J, M-1, and the kinetic properties of the underlying network for kinetic models of metabolism. Specifically, we describe the origin of mode sparsity structure based on features of the network stoichiometric matrix S and the reaction kinetic gradient matrix G. First, we show that due to the scaling of kinetic parameters in real networks, diagonal dominance occurs in a substantial fraction of the rows of J, resulting in simple modal structures with clear biological interpretations. Then, we show that more complicated modes originate from topologically-connected reactions that have similar reaction elasticities in G. These elasticities represent dynamic equilibrium balances within reactions and are key determinants of modal structure. The work presented should prove useful towards obtaining an understanding of the dynamics of kinetic models of metabolism, which are rooted in the network structure and the kinetic properties of reactions.

  10. Reconstruction of the central carbon metabolism of Aspergillus niger

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    David, Helga; Åkesson, Mats Fredrik; Nielsen, Jens

    2003-01-01

    The topology of central carbon metabolism of Aspergillus niger was identified and the metabolic network reconstructed, by integrating genomic, biochemical and physiological information available for this microorganism and other related fungi. The reconstructed network may serve as a valuable...... of metabolic fluxes using metabolite balancing. This framework was employed to perform an in silico characterisation of the phenotypic behaviour of A. niger grown on different carbon sources. The effects on growth of single reaction deletions were assessed and essential biochemical reactions were identified...... for different carbon sources. Furthermore, application of the stoichiometric model for assessing the metabolic capabilities of A. niger to produce metabolites was evaluated by using succinate production as a case study....

  11. Genetic networks of liver metabolism revealed by integration of metabolic and transcriptional profiling.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Christine T Ferrara

    2008-03-01

    Full Text Available Although numerous quantitative trait loci (QTL influencing disease-related phenotypes have been detected through gene mapping and positional cloning, identification of the individual gene(s and molecular pathways leading to those phenotypes is often elusive. One way to improve understanding of genetic architecture is to classify phenotypes in greater depth by including transcriptional and metabolic profiling. In the current study, we have generated and analyzed mRNA expression and metabolic profiles in liver samples obtained in an F2 intercross between the diabetes-resistant C57BL/6 leptin(ob/ob and the diabetes-susceptible BTBR leptin(ob/ob mouse strains. This cross, which segregates for genotype and physiological traits, was previously used to identify several diabetes-related QTL. Our current investigation includes microarray analysis of over 40,000 probe sets, plus quantitative mass spectrometry-based measurements of sixty-seven intermediary metabolites in three different classes (amino acids, organic acids, and acyl-carnitines. We show that liver metabolites map to distinct genetic regions, thereby indicating that tissue metabolites are heritable. We also demonstrate that genomic analysis can be integrated with liver mRNA expression and metabolite profiling data to construct causal networks for control of specific metabolic processes in liver. As a proof of principle of the practical significance of this integrative approach, we illustrate the construction of a specific causal network that links gene expression and metabolic changes in the context of glutamate metabolism, and demonstrate its validity by showing that genes in the network respond to changes in glutamine and glutamate availability. Thus, the methods described here have the potential to reveal regulatory networks that contribute to chronic, complex, and highly prevalent diseases and conditions such as obesity and diabetes.

  12. Conditions for extinction events in chemical reaction networks with discrete state spaces.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Johnston, Matthew D; Anderson, David F; Craciun, Gheorghe; Brijder, Robert

    2018-05-01

    We study chemical reaction networks with discrete state spaces and present sufficient conditions on the structure of the network that guarantee the system exhibits an extinction event. The conditions we derive involve creating a modified chemical reaction network called a domination-expanded reaction network and then checking properties of this network. Unlike previous results, our analysis allows algorithmic implementation via systems of equalities and inequalities and suggests sequences of reactions which may lead to extinction events. We apply the results to several networks including an EnvZ-OmpR signaling pathway in Escherichia coli.

  13. Characterizing multistationarity regimes in biochemical reaction networks.

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    Irene Otero-Muras

    Full Text Available Switch like responses appear as common strategies in the regulation of cellular systems. Here we present a method to characterize bistable regimes in biochemical reaction networks that can be of use to both direct and reverse engineering of biological switches. In the design of a synthetic biological switch, it is important to study the capability for bistability of the underlying biochemical network structure. Chemical Reaction Network Theory (CRNT may help at this level to decide whether a given network has the capacity for multiple positive equilibria, based on their structural properties. However, in order to build a working switch, we also need to ensure that the bistability property is robust, by studying the conditions leading to the existence of two different steady states. In the reverse engineering of biological switches, knowledge collected about the bistable regimes of the underlying potential model structures can contribute at the model identification stage to a drastic reduction of the feasible region in the parameter space of search. In this work, we make use and extend previous results of the CRNT, aiming not only to discriminate whether a biochemical reaction network can exhibit multiple steady states, but also to determine the regions within the whole space of parameters capable of producing multistationarity. To that purpose we present and justify a condition on the parameters of biochemical networks for the appearance of multistationarity, and propose an efficient and reliable computational method to check its satisfaction through the parameter space.

  14. Chemical reaction vector embeddings: towards predicting drug metabolism in the human gut microbiome.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mallory, Emily K; Acharya, Ambika; Rensi, Stefano E; Turnbaugh, Peter J; Bright, Roselie A; Altman, Russ B

    2018-01-01

    Bacteria in the human gut have the ability to activate, inactivate, and reactivate drugs with both intended and unintended effects. For example, the drug digoxin is reduced to the inactive metabolite dihydrodigoxin by the gut Actinobacterium E. lenta, and patients colonized with high levels of drug metabolizing strains may have limited response to the drug. Understanding the complete space of drugs that are metabolized by the human gut microbiome is critical for predicting bacteria-drug relationships and their effects on individual patient response. Discovery and validation of drug metabolism via bacterial enzymes has yielded >50 drugs after nearly a century of experimental research. However, there are limited computational tools for screening drugs for potential metabolism by the gut microbiome. We developed a pipeline for comparing and characterizing chemical transformations using continuous vector representations of molecular structure learned using unsupervised representation learning. We applied this pipeline to chemical reaction data from MetaCyc to characterize the utility of vector representations for chemical reaction transformations. After clustering molecular and reaction vectors, we performed enrichment analyses and queries to characterize the space. We detected enriched enzyme names, Gene Ontology terms, and Enzyme Consortium (EC) classes within reaction clusters. In addition, we queried reactions against drug-metabolite transformations known to be metabolized by the human gut microbiome. The top results for these known drug transformations contained similar substructure modifications to the original drug pair. This work enables high throughput screening of drugs and their resulting metabolites against chemical reactions common to gut bacteria.

  15. LmSmdB: an integrated database for metabolic and gene regulatory network in Leishmania major and Schistosoma mansoni

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Priyanka Patel

    2016-03-01

    Full Text Available A database that integrates all the information required for biological processing is essential to be stored in one platform. We have attempted to create one such integrated database that can be a one stop shop for the essential features required to fetch valuable result. LmSmdB (L. major and S. mansoni database is an integrated database that accounts for the biological networks and regulatory pathways computationally determined by integrating the knowledge of the genome sequences of the mentioned organisms. It is the first database of its kind that has together with the network designing showed the simulation pattern of the product. This database intends to create a comprehensive canopy for the regulation of lipid metabolism reaction in the parasite by integrating the transcription factors, regulatory genes and the protein products controlled by the transcription factors and hence operating the metabolism at genetic level. Keywords: L.major, S.mansoni, Regulatory networks, Transcription factors, Database

  16. Nonequilibrium thermodynamics and a fluctuation theorem for individual reaction steps in a chemical reaction network

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Pal, Krishnendu; Das, Biswajit; Banerjee, Kinshuk; Gangopadhyay, Gautam

    2015-01-01

    We have introduced an approach to nonequilibrium thermodynamics of an open chemical reaction network in terms of the propensities of the individual elementary reactions and the corresponding reverse reactions. The method is a microscopic formulation of the dissipation function in terms of the relative entropy or Kullback-Leibler distance which is based on the analogy of phase space trajectory with the path of elementary reactions in a network of chemical process. We have introduced here a fluctuation theorem valid for each opposite pair of elementary reactions which is useful in determining the contribution of each sub-reaction on the nonequilibrium thermodynamics of overall reaction. The methodology is applied to an oligomeric enzyme kinetics at a chemiostatic condition that leads the reaction to a nonequilibrium steady state for which we have estimated how each step of the reaction is energy driven or entropy driven to contribute to the overall reaction. (paper)

  17. Integration of metabolic and gene regulatory networks modulates the C. elegans dietary response.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Watson, Emma; MacNeil, Lesley T; Arda, H Efsun; Zhu, Lihua Julie; Walhout, Albertha J M

    2013-03-28

    Expression profiles are tailored according to dietary input. However, the networks that control dietary responses remain largely uncharacterized. Here, we combine forward and reverse genetic screens to delineate a network of 184 genes that affect the C. elegans dietary response to Comamonas DA1877 bacteria. We find that perturbation of a mitochondrial network composed of enzymes involved in amino acid metabolism and the TCA cycle affects the dietary response. In humans, mutations in the corresponding genes cause inborn diseases of amino acid metabolism, most of which are treated by dietary intervention. We identify several transcription factors (TFs) that mediate the changes in gene expression upon metabolic network perturbations. Altogether, our findings unveil a transcriptional response system that is poised to sense dietary cues and metabolic imbalances, illustrating extensive communication between metabolic networks in the mitochondria and gene regulatory networks in the nucleus. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  18. In Silico Genome-Scale Reconstruction and Validation of the Corynebacterium glutamicum Metabolic Network

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Kjeldsen, Kjeld Raunkjær; Nielsen, J.

    2009-01-01

    A genome-scale metabolic model of the Gram-positive bacteria Corynebacterium glutamicum ATCC 13032 was constructed comprising 446 reactions and 411 metabolite, based on the annotated genome and available biochemical information. The network was analyzed using constraint based methods. The model...... was extensively validated against published flux data, and flux distribution values were found to correlate well between simulations and experiments. The split pathway of the lysine synthesis pathway of C. glutamicum was investigated, and it was found that the direct dehydrogenase variant gave a higher lysine...... yield than the alternative succinyl pathway at high lysine production rates. The NADPH demand of the network was not found to be critical for lysine production until lysine yields exceeded 55% (mmol lysine (mmol glucose)(-1)). The model was validated during growth on the organic acids acetate...

  19. SkyNet: Modular nuclear reaction network library

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lippuner, Jonas; Roberts, Luke F.

    2017-10-01

    The general-purpose nuclear reaction network SkyNet evolves the abundances of nuclear species under the influence of nuclear reactions. SkyNet can be used to compute the nucleosynthesis evolution in all astrophysical scenarios where nucleosynthesis occurs. Any list of isotopes can be evolved and SkyNet supports various different types of nuclear reactions. SkyNet is modular, permitting new or existing physics, such as nuclear reactions or equations of state, to be easily added or modified.

  20. Molecular codes in biological and chemical reaction networks.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Dennis Görlich

    Full Text Available Shannon's theory of communication has been very successfully applied for the analysis of biological information. However, the theory neglects semantic and pragmatic aspects and thus cannot directly be applied to distinguish between (bio- chemical systems able to process "meaningful" information from those that do not. Here, we present a formal method to assess a system's semantic capacity by analyzing a reaction network's capability to implement molecular codes. We analyzed models of chemical systems (martian atmosphere chemistry and various combustion chemistries, biochemical systems (gene expression, gene translation, and phosphorylation signaling cascades, an artificial chemistry, and random reaction networks. Our study suggests that different chemical systems possess different semantic capacities. No semantic capacity was found in the model of the martian atmosphere chemistry, the studied combustion chemistries, and highly connected random networks, i.e. with these chemistries molecular codes cannot be implemented. High semantic capacity was found in the studied biochemical systems and in random reaction networks where the number of second order reactions is twice the number of species. We conclude that our approach can be applied to evaluate the information processing capabilities of a chemical system and may thus be a useful tool to understand the origin and evolution of meaningful information, e.g. in the context of the origin of life.

  1. Limited Influence of Oxygen on the Evolution of Chemical Diversity in Metabolic Networks

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Kazuhiro Takemoto

    2013-10-01

    Full Text Available Oxygen is thought to promote species and biomolecule diversity. Previous studies have suggested that oxygen expands metabolic networks by acquiring metabolites with different chemical properties (higher hydrophobicity, for example. However, such conclusions are typically based on biased evaluation, and are therefore non-conclusive. Thus, we re-investigated the effect of oxygen on metabolic evolution using a phylogenetic comparative method and metadata analysis to reduce the bias as much as possible. Notably, we found no difference in metabolic network expansion between aerobes and anaerobes when evaluating phylogenetic relationships. Furthermore, we showed that previous studies have overestimated or underestimated the degrees of differences in the chemical properties (e.g., hydrophobicity between oxic and anoxic metabolites in metabolic networks of unicellular organisms; however, such overestimation was not observed when considering the metabolic networks of multicellular organisms. These findings indicate that the contribution of oxygen to increased chemical diversity in metabolic networks is lower than previously thought; rather, phylogenetic signals and cell-cell communication result in increased chemical diversity. However, this conclusion does not contradict the effect of oxygen on metabolic evolution; instead, it provides a deeper understanding of how oxygen contributes to metabolic evolution despite several limitations in data analysis methods.

  2. Estimation of parameter sensitivities for stochastic reaction networks

    KAUST Repository

    Gupta, Ankit

    2016-01-07

    Quantification of the effects of parameter uncertainty is an important and challenging problem in Systems Biology. We consider this problem in the context of stochastic models of biochemical reaction networks where the dynamics is described as a continuous-time Markov chain whose states represent the molecular counts of various species. For such models, effects of parameter uncertainty are often quantified by estimating the infinitesimal sensitivities of some observables with respect to model parameters. The aim of this talk is to present a holistic approach towards this problem of estimating parameter sensitivities for stochastic reaction networks. Our approach is based on a generic formula which allows us to construct efficient estimators for parameter sensitivity using simulations of the underlying model. We will discuss how novel simulation techniques, such as tau-leaping approximations, multi-level methods etc. can be easily integrated with our approach and how one can deal with stiff reaction networks where reactions span multiple time-scales. We will demonstrate the efficiency and applicability of our approach using many examples from the biological literature.

  3. A reaction-diffusion model of ROS-induced ROS release in a mitochondrial network.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Lufang Zhou

    2010-01-01

    Full Text Available Loss of mitochondrial function is a fundamental determinant of cell injury and death. In heart cells under metabolic stress, we have previously described how the abrupt collapse or oscillation of the mitochondrial energy state is synchronized across the mitochondrial network by local interactions dependent upon reactive oxygen species (ROS. Here, we develop a mathematical model of ROS-induced ROS release (RIRR based on reaction-diffusion (RD-RIRR in one- and two-dimensional mitochondrial networks. The nodes of the RD-RIRR network are comprised of models of individual mitochondria that include a mechanism of ROS-dependent oscillation based on the interplay between ROS production, transport, and scavenging; and incorporating the tricarboxylic acid (TCA cycle, oxidative phosphorylation, and Ca(2+ handling. Local mitochondrial interaction is mediated by superoxide (O2.- diffusion and the O2.(--dependent activation of an inner membrane anion channel (IMAC. In a 2D network composed of 500 mitochondria, model simulations reveal DeltaPsi(m depolarization waves similar to those observed when isolated guinea pig cardiomyocytes are subjected to a localized laser-flash or antioxidant depletion. The sensitivity of the propagation rate of the depolarization wave to O(2.- diffusion, production, and scavenging in the reaction-diffusion model is similar to that observed experimentally. In addition, we present novel experimental evidence, obtained in permeabilized cardiomyocytes, confirming that DeltaPsi(m depolarization is mediated specifically by O2.-. The present work demonstrates that the observed emergent macroscopic properties of the mitochondrial network can be reproduced in a reaction-diffusion model of RIRR. Moreover, the findings have uncovered a novel aspect of the synchronization mechanism, which is that clusters of mitochondria that are oscillating can entrain mitochondria that would otherwise display stable dynamics. The work identifies the

  4. A general model for metabolic scaling in self-similar asymmetric networks.

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    Alexander Byers Brummer

    2017-03-01

    Full Text Available How a particular attribute of an organism changes or scales with its body size is known as an allometry. Biological allometries, such as metabolic scaling, have been hypothesized to result from selection to maximize how vascular networks fill space yet minimize internal transport distances and resistances. The West, Brown, Enquist (WBE model argues that these two principles (space-filling and energy minimization are (i general principles underlying the evolution of the diversity of biological networks across plants and animals and (ii can be used to predict how the resulting geometry of biological networks then governs their allometric scaling. Perhaps the most central biological allometry is how metabolic rate scales with body size. A core assumption of the WBE model is that networks are symmetric with respect to their geometric properties. That is, any two given branches within the same generation in the network are assumed to have identical lengths and radii. However, biological networks are rarely if ever symmetric. An open question is: Does incorporating asymmetric branching change or influence the predictions of the WBE model? We derive a general network model that relaxes the symmetric assumption and define two classes of asymmetrically bifurcating networks. We show that asymmetric branching can be incorporated into the WBE model. This asymmetric version of the WBE model results in several theoretical predictions for the structure, physiology, and metabolism of organisms, specifically in the case for the cardiovascular system. We show how network asymmetry can now be incorporated in the many allometric scaling relationships via total network volume. Most importantly, we show that the 3/4 metabolic scaling exponent from Kleiber's Law can still be attained within many asymmetric networks.

  5. Bringing metabolic networks to life: convenience rate law and thermodynamic constraints

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    Klipp Edda

    2006-12-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background Translating a known metabolic network into a dynamic model requires rate laws for all chemical reactions. The mathematical expressions depend on the underlying enzymatic mechanism; they can become quite involved and may contain a large number of parameters. Rate laws and enzyme parameters are still unknown for most enzymes. Results We introduce a simple and general rate law called "convenience kinetics". It can be derived from a simple random-order enzyme mechanism. Thermodynamic laws can impose dependencies on the kinetic parameters. Hence, to facilitate model fitting and parameter optimisation for large networks, we introduce thermodynamically independent system parameters: their values can be varied independently, without violating thermodynamical constraints. We achieve this by expressing the equilibrium constants either by Gibbs free energies of formation or by a set of independent equilibrium constants. The remaining system parameters are mean turnover rates, generalised Michaelis-Menten constants, and constants for inhibition and activation. All parameters correspond to molecular energies, for instance, binding energies between reactants and enzyme. Conclusion Convenience kinetics can be used to translate a biochemical network – manually or automatically - into a dynamical model with plausible biological properties. It implements enzyme saturation and regulation by activators and inhibitors, covers all possible reaction stoichiometries, and can be specified by a small number of parameters. Its mathematical form makes it especially suitable for parameter estimation and optimisation. Parameter estimates can be easily computed from a least-squares fit to Michaelis-Menten values, turnover rates, equilibrium constants, and other quantities that are routinely measured in enzyme assays and stored in kinetic databases.

  6. EGFR Signal-Network Reconstruction Demonstrates Metabolic Crosstalk in EMT.

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    Kumari Sonal Choudhary

    2016-06-01

    Full Text Available Epithelial to mesenchymal transition (EMT is an important event during development and cancer metastasis. There is limited understanding of the metabolic alterations that give rise to and take place during EMT. Dysregulation of signalling pathways that impact metabolism, including epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR, are however a hallmark of EMT and metastasis. In this study, we report the investigation into EGFR signalling and metabolic crosstalk of EMT through constraint-based modelling and analysis of the breast epithelial EMT cell model D492 and its mesenchymal counterpart D492M. We built an EGFR signalling network for EMT based on stoichiometric coefficients and constrained the network with gene expression data to build epithelial (EGFR_E and mesenchymal (EGFR_M networks. Metabolic alterations arising from differential expression of EGFR genes was derived from a literature review of AKT regulated metabolic genes. Signaling flux differences between EGFR_E and EGFR_M models subsequently allowed metabolism in D492 and D492M cells to be assessed. Higher flux within AKT pathway in the D492 cells compared to D492M suggested higher glycolytic activity in D492 that we confirmed experimentally through measurements of glucose uptake and lactate secretion rates. The signaling genes from the AKT, RAS/MAPK and CaM pathways were predicted to revert D492M to D492 phenotype. Follow-up analysis of EGFR signaling metabolic crosstalk in three additional breast epithelial cell lines highlighted variability in in vitro cell models of EMT. This study shows that the metabolic phenotype may be predicted by in silico analyses of gene expression data of EGFR signaling genes, but this phenomenon is cell-specific and does not follow a simple trend.

  7. EGFR Signal-Network Reconstruction Demonstrates Metabolic Crosstalk in EMT.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Choudhary, Kumari Sonal; Rohatgi, Neha; Halldorsson, Skarphedinn; Briem, Eirikur; Gudjonsson, Thorarinn; Gudmundsson, Steinn; Rolfsson, Ottar

    2016-06-01

    Epithelial to mesenchymal transition (EMT) is an important event during development and cancer metastasis. There is limited understanding of the metabolic alterations that give rise to and take place during EMT. Dysregulation of signalling pathways that impact metabolism, including epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR), are however a hallmark of EMT and metastasis. In this study, we report the investigation into EGFR signalling and metabolic crosstalk of EMT through constraint-based modelling and analysis of the breast epithelial EMT cell model D492 and its mesenchymal counterpart D492M. We built an EGFR signalling network for EMT based on stoichiometric coefficients and constrained the network with gene expression data to build epithelial (EGFR_E) and mesenchymal (EGFR_M) networks. Metabolic alterations arising from differential expression of EGFR genes was derived from a literature review of AKT regulated metabolic genes. Signaling flux differences between EGFR_E and EGFR_M models subsequently allowed metabolism in D492 and D492M cells to be assessed. Higher flux within AKT pathway in the D492 cells compared to D492M suggested higher glycolytic activity in D492 that we confirmed experimentally through measurements of glucose uptake and lactate secretion rates. The signaling genes from the AKT, RAS/MAPK and CaM pathways were predicted to revert D492M to D492 phenotype. Follow-up analysis of EGFR signaling metabolic crosstalk in three additional breast epithelial cell lines highlighted variability in in vitro cell models of EMT. This study shows that the metabolic phenotype may be predicted by in silico analyses of gene expression data of EGFR signaling genes, but this phenomenon is cell-specific and does not follow a simple trend.

  8. Modeling of uncertainties in biochemical reactions.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mišković, Ljubiša; Hatzimanikatis, Vassily

    2011-02-01

    Mathematical modeling is an indispensable tool for research and development in biotechnology and bioengineering. The formulation of kinetic models of biochemical networks depends on knowledge of the kinetic properties of the enzymes of the individual reactions. However, kinetic data acquired from experimental observations bring along uncertainties due to various experimental conditions and measurement methods. In this contribution, we propose a novel way to model the uncertainty in the enzyme kinetics and to predict quantitatively the responses of metabolic reactions to the changes in enzyme activities under uncertainty. The proposed methodology accounts explicitly for mechanistic properties of enzymes and physico-chemical and thermodynamic constraints, and is based on formalism from systems theory and metabolic control analysis. We achieve this by observing that kinetic responses of metabolic reactions depend: (i) on the distribution of the enzymes among their free form and all reactive states; (ii) on the equilibrium displacements of the overall reaction and that of the individual enzymatic steps; and (iii) on the net fluxes through the enzyme. Relying on this observation, we develop a novel, efficient Monte Carlo sampling procedure to generate all states within a metabolic reaction that satisfy imposed constrains. Thus, we derive the statistics of the expected responses of the metabolic reactions to changes in enzyme levels and activities, in the levels of metabolites, and in the values of the kinetic parameters. We present aspects of the proposed framework through an example of the fundamental three-step reversible enzymatic reaction mechanism. We demonstrate that the equilibrium displacements of the individual enzymatic steps have an important influence on kinetic responses of the enzyme. Furthermore, we derive the conditions that must be satisfied by a reversible three-step enzymatic reaction operating far away from the equilibrium in order to respond to

  9. Consumer Activities and Reactions to Social Network Marketing

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    Bistra Vassileva

    2017-06-01

    Full Text Available The purpose of this paper is to understand consumer behavioural models with respect to their reactions to social network marketing. Theoretical background is focused on online and social network usage, motivations and behaviour. The research goal is to explore consumer reactions to the exposure of social network marketing based on the following criteria: level of brand engagement, word-of-mouth (WOM referral behaviour, and purchase intentions. Consumers are investigated based on their attitudes toward social network marketing and basic socio-demographic covariates using data from a sample size of 700 Bulgarian respondents (age group 21–54 years, Internet users, urban inhabitants. Factor and cluster analyses are applied. It is found that consumers are willing to receive information about brands and companies through social networks. They like to talk in social networks about these brands and companies and to share information as well (factor 2, brand engagement. Internet users are willing to share information received through social network advertising (factor 1, wom referral behaviour but they would not buy a certain brand as a result of brand communication activities in social networks (factor 3, purchase intention. Several practical implications regarding marketing activities through social networks are drawn.

  10. Systems biology and the origins of life? part II. Are biochemical networks possible ancestors of living systems? networks of catalysed chemical reactions: non-equilibrium, self-organization and evolution.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ricard, Jacques

    2010-01-01

    The present article discusses the possibility that catalysed chemical networks can evolve. Even simple enzyme-catalysed chemical reactions can display this property. The example studied is that of a two-substrate proteinoid, or enzyme, reaction displaying random binding of its substrates A and B. The fundamental property of such a system is to display either emergence or integration depending on the respective values of the probabilities that the enzyme has bound one of its substrate regardless it has bound the other substrate, or, specifically, after it has bound the other substrate. There is emergence of information if p(A)>p(AB) and p(B)>p(BA). Conversely, if p(A)equilibrium. Moreover, in such systems, emergence results in an increase of the energy level of the ternary EAB complex that becomes closer to the transition state of the reaction, thus leading to the enhancement of catalysis. Hence a drift from quasi-equilibrium is, to a large extent, responsible for the production of information and enhancement of catalysis. Non-equilibrium of these simple systems must be an important aspect that leads to both self-organization and evolutionary processes. These conclusions can be extended to networks of catalysed chemical reactions. Such networks are, in fact, networks of networks, viz. meta-networks. In this formal representation, nodes are chemical reactions catalysed by poorly specific proteinoids, and links can be identified to the transport of metabolites from proteinoid to proteinoid. The concepts of integration and emergence can be applied to such situations and can be used to define the identity of these networks and therefore their evolution. Defined as open non-equilibrium structures, such biochemical networks possess two remarkable properties: (1) the probability of occurrence of their nodes is dependant upon the input and output of matter in, and from, the system and (2) the probability of occurrence of the nodes is strictly linked to their degree of

  11. Data-driven integration of genome-scale regulatory and metabolic network models

    Science.gov (United States)

    Imam, Saheed; Schäuble, Sascha; Brooks, Aaron N.; Baliga, Nitin S.; Price, Nathan D.

    2015-01-01

    Microbes are diverse and extremely versatile organisms that play vital roles in all ecological niches. Understanding and harnessing microbial systems will be key to the sustainability of our planet. One approach to improving our knowledge of microbial processes is through data-driven and mechanism-informed computational modeling. Individual models of biological networks (such as metabolism, transcription, and signaling) have played pivotal roles in driving microbial research through the years. These networks, however, are highly interconnected and function in concert—a fact that has led to the development of a variety of approaches aimed at simulating the integrated functions of two or more network types. Though the task of integrating these different models is fraught with new challenges, the large amounts of high-throughput data sets being generated, and algorithms being developed, means that the time is at hand for concerted efforts to build integrated regulatory-metabolic networks in a data-driven fashion. In this perspective, we review current approaches for constructing integrated regulatory-metabolic models and outline new strategies for future development of these network models for any microbial system. PMID:25999934

  12. Construction and analysis of the model of energy metabolism in E. coli.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Zixiang Xu

    Full Text Available Genome-scale models of metabolism have only been analyzed with the constraint-based modelling philosophy and there have been several genome-scale gene-protein-reaction models. But research on the modelling for energy metabolism of organisms just began in recent years and research on metabolic weighted complex network are rare in literature. We have made three research based on the complete model of E. coli's energy metabolism. We first constructed a metabolic weighted network using the rates of free energy consumption within metabolic reactions as the weights. We then analyzed some structural characters of the metabolic weighted network that we constructed. We found that the distribution of the weight values was uneven, that most of the weight values were zero while reactions with abstract large weight values were rare and that the relationship between w (weight values and v (flux values was not of linear correlation. At last, we have done some research on the equilibrium of free energy for the energy metabolism system of E. coli. We found that E(out (free energy rate input from the environment can meet the demand of E(ch(in (free energy rate dissipated by chemical process and that chemical process plays a great role in the dissipation of free energy in cells. By these research and to a certain extend, we can understand more about the energy metabolism of E. coli.

  13. Optimal knockout strategies in genome-scale metabolic networks using particle swarm optimization.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Nair, Govind; Jungreuthmayer, Christian; Zanghellini, Jürgen

    2017-02-01

    Knockout strategies, particularly the concept of constrained minimal cut sets (cMCSs), are an important part of the arsenal of tools used in manipulating metabolic networks. Given a specific design, cMCSs can be calculated even in genome-scale networks. We would however like to find not only the optimal intervention strategy for a given design but the best possible design too. Our solution (PSOMCS) is to use particle swarm optimization (PSO) along with the direct calculation of cMCSs from the stoichiometric matrix to obtain optimal designs satisfying multiple objectives. To illustrate the working of PSOMCS, we apply it to a toy network. Next we show its superiority by comparing its performance against other comparable methods on a medium sized E. coli core metabolic network. PSOMCS not only finds solutions comparable to previously published results but also it is orders of magnitude faster. Finally, we use PSOMCS to predict knockouts satisfying multiple objectives in a genome-scale metabolic model of E. coli and compare it with OptKnock and RobustKnock. PSOMCS finds competitive knockout strategies and designs compared to other current methods and is in some cases significantly faster. It can be used in identifying knockouts which will force optimal desired behaviors in large and genome scale metabolic networks. It will be even more useful as larger metabolic models of industrially relevant organisms become available.

  14. Network analysis of metabolic enzyme evolution in Escherichia coli

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Kraulis Per

    2004-02-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background The two most common models for the evolution of metabolism are the patchwork evolution model, where enzymes are thought to diverge from broad to narrow substrate specificity, and the retrograde evolution model, according to which enzymes evolve in response to substrate depletion. Analysis of the distribution of homologous enzyme pairs in the metabolic network can shed light on the respective importance of the two models. We here investigate the evolution of the metabolism in E. coli viewed as a single network using EcoCyc. Results Sequence comparison between all enzyme pairs was performed and the minimal path length (MPL between all enzyme pairs was determined. We find a strong over-representation of homologous enzymes at MPL 1. We show that the functionally similar and functionally undetermined enzyme pairs are responsible for most of the over-representation of homologous enzyme pairs at MPL 1. Conclusions The retrograde evolution model predicts that homologous enzymes pairs are at short metabolic distances from each other. In general agreement with previous studies we find that homologous enzymes occur close to each other in the network more often than expected by chance, which lends some support to the retrograde evolution model. However, we show that the homologous enzyme pairs which may have evolved through retrograde evolution, namely the pairs that are functionally dissimilar, show a weaker over-representation at MPL 1 than the functionally similar enzyme pairs. Our study indicates that, while the retrograde evolution model may have played a small part, the patchwork evolution model is the predominant process of metabolic enzyme evolution.

  15. Regulation of Mammalian Metabolism by Facilitated Transport Across the Inner Mitochondrial Membrane

    OpenAIRE

    Vacanti, Nathaniel Martin

    2015-01-01

    The enzymes and reactions of the metabolic network provide cells with a means to utilize the energy stored in substrate chemical bonds and to rearrange those bonds to form biosynthetic building blocks. The chapters of this dissertation are all independent bodies of work exploring how the metabolic network influences and regulates cellular function or dysfunction. Chapter 1, titled "Exploring Metabolic Pathways that Contribute to the Stem Cell Phenotype", is a case study on how the metabolic n...

  16. Systems Nutrigenomics Reveals Brain Gene Networks Linking Metabolic and Brain Disorders.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Meng, Qingying; Ying, Zhe; Noble, Emily; Zhao, Yuqi; Agrawal, Rahul; Mikhail, Andrew; Zhuang, Yumei; Tyagi, Ethika; Zhang, Qing; Lee, Jae-Hyung; Morselli, Marco; Orozco, Luz; Guo, Weilong; Kilts, Tina M; Zhu, Jun; Zhang, Bin; Pellegrini, Matteo; Xiao, Xinshu; Young, Marian F; Gomez-Pinilla, Fernando; Yang, Xia

    2016-05-01

    Nutrition plays a significant role in the increasing prevalence of metabolic and brain disorders. Here we employ systems nutrigenomics to scrutinize the genomic bases of nutrient-host interaction underlying disease predisposition or therapeutic potential. We conducted transcriptome and epigenome sequencing of hypothalamus (metabolic control) and hippocampus (cognitive processing) from a rodent model of fructose consumption, and identified significant reprogramming of DNA methylation, transcript abundance, alternative splicing, and gene networks governing cell metabolism, cell communication, inflammation, and neuronal signaling. These signals converged with genetic causal risks of metabolic, neurological, and psychiatric disorders revealed in humans. Gene network modeling uncovered the extracellular matrix genes Bgn and Fmod as main orchestrators of the effects of fructose, as validated using two knockout mouse models. We further demonstrate that an omega-3 fatty acid, DHA, reverses the genomic and network perturbations elicited by fructose, providing molecular support for nutritional interventions to counteract diet-induced metabolic and brain disorders. Our integrative approach complementing rodent and human studies supports the applicability of nutrigenomics principles to predict disease susceptibility and to guide personalized medicine. Copyright © 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  17. The players may change but the game remains: network analyses of ruminal microbiomes suggest taxonomic differences mask functional similarity

    Science.gov (United States)

    Taxis, Tasia M.; Wolff, Sara; Gregg, Sarah J.; Minton, Nicholas O.; Zhang, Chiqian; Dai, Jingjing; Schnabel, Robert D.; Taylor, Jeremy F.; Kerley, Monty S.; Pires, J. Chris; Lamberson, William R.; Conant, Gavin C.

    2015-01-01

    By mapping translated metagenomic reads to a microbial metabolic network, we show that ruminal ecosystems that are rather dissimilar in their taxonomy can be considerably more similar at the metabolic network level. Using a new network bi-partition approach for linking the microbial network to a bovine metabolic network, we observe that these ruminal metabolic networks exhibit properties consistent with distinct metabolic communities producing similar outputs from common inputs. For instance, the closer in network space that a microbial reaction is to a reaction found in the host, the lower will be the variability of its enzyme copy number across hosts. Similarly, these microbial enzymes that are nearby to host nodes are also higher in copy number than are more distant enzymes. Collectively, these results demonstrate a widely expected pattern that, to our knowledge, has not been explicitly demonstrated in microbial communities: namely that there can exist different community metabolic networks that have the same metabolic inputs and outputs but differ in their internal structure. PMID:26420832

  18. Critical assessment of human metabolic pathway databases: a stepping stone for future integration

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Stobbe Miranda D

    2011-10-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background Multiple pathway databases are available that describe the human metabolic network and have proven their usefulness in many applications, ranging from the analysis and interpretation of high-throughput data to their use as a reference repository. However, so far the various human metabolic networks described by these databases have not been systematically compared and contrasted, nor has the extent to which they differ been quantified. For a researcher using these databases for particular analyses of human metabolism, it is crucial to know the extent of the differences in content and their underlying causes. Moreover, the outcomes of such a comparison are important for ongoing integration efforts. Results We compared the genes, EC numbers and reactions of five frequently used human metabolic pathway databases. The overlap is surprisingly low, especially on reaction level, where the databases agree on 3% of the 6968 reactions they have combined. Even for the well-established tricarboxylic acid cycle the databases agree on only 5 out of the 30 reactions in total. We identified the main causes for the lack of overlap. Importantly, the databases are partly complementary. Other explanations include the number of steps a conversion is described in and the number of possible alternative substrates listed. Missing metabolite identifiers and ambiguous names for metabolites also affect the comparison. Conclusions Our results show that each of the five networks compared provides us with a valuable piece of the puzzle of the complete reconstruction of the human metabolic network. To enable integration of the networks, next to a need for standardizing the metabolite names and identifiers, the conceptual differences between the databases should be resolved. Considerable manual intervention is required to reach the ultimate goal of a unified and biologically accurate model for studying the systems biology of human metabolism. Our comparison

  19. On the network thermodynamics of mass action chemical reaction networks

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Schaft, A.J. van der; Rao, S.; Jayawardhana, B.

    In this paper we elaborate on the mathematical formulation of mass action chemical reaction networks as recently given in van der Schaft, Rao, Jayawardhana (2012). We show how the reference chemical potentials define a specific thermodynamical equilibrium, and we discuss the port-Hamiltonian

  20. lumpGEM: Systematic generation of subnetworks and elementally balanced lumped reactions for the biosynthesis of target metabolites.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Meric Ataman

    2017-07-01

    Full Text Available In the post-genomic era, Genome-scale metabolic networks (GEMs have emerged as invaluable tools to understand metabolic capabilities of organisms. Different parts of these metabolic networks are defined as subsystems/pathways, which are sets of functional roles to implement a specific biological process or structural complex, such as glycolysis and TCA cycle. Subsystem/pathway definition is also employed to delineate the biosynthetic routes that produce biomass building blocks. In databases, such as MetaCyc and SEED, these representations are composed of linear routes from precursors to target biomass building blocks. However, this approach cannot capture the nested, complex nature of GEMs. Here we implemented an algorithm, lumpGEM, which generates biosynthetic subnetworks composed of reactions that can synthesize a target metabolite from a set of defined core precursor metabolites. lumpGEM captures balanced subnetworks, which account for the fate of all metabolites along the synthesis routes, thus encapsulating reactions from various subsystems/pathways to balance these metabolites in the metabolic network. Moreover, lumpGEM collapses these subnetworks into elementally balanced lumped reactions that specify the cost of all precursor metabolites and cofactors. It also generates alternative subnetworks and lumped reactions for the same metabolite, accounting for the flexibility of organisms. lumpGEM is applicable to any GEM and any target metabolite defined in the network. Lumped reactions generated by lumpGEM can be also used to generate properly balanced reduced core metabolic models.

  1. Computational solution to automatically map metabolite libraries in the context of genome scale metabolic networks

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Benjamin eMerlet

    2016-02-01

    Full Text Available This article describes a generic programmatic method for mapping chemical compound libraries on organism-specific metabolic networks from various databases (KEGG, BioCyc and flat file formats (SBML and Matlab files. We show how this pipeline was successfully applied to decipher the coverage of chemical libraries set up by two metabolomics facilities MetaboHub (French National infrastructure for metabolomics and fluxomics and Glasgow Polyomics on the metabolic networks available in the MetExplore web server. The present generic protocol is designed to formalize and reduce the volume of information transfer between the library and the network database. Matching of metabolites between libraries and metabolic networks is based on InChIs or InChIKeys and therefore requires that these identifiers are specified in both libraries and networks.In addition to providing covering statistics, this pipeline also allows the visualization of mapping results in the context of metabolic networks.In order to achieve this goal we tackled issues on programmatic interaction between two servers, improvement of metabolite annotation in metabolic networks and automatic loading of a mapping in genome scale metabolic network analysis tool MetExplore. It is important to note that this mapping can also be performed on a single or a selection of organisms of interest and is thus not limited to large facilities.

  2. Co-regulation of metabolic genes is better explained by flux coupling than by network distance.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Richard A Notebaart

    2008-01-01

    Full Text Available To what extent can modes of gene regulation be explained by systems-level properties of metabolic networks? Prior studies on co-regulation of metabolic genes have mainly focused on graph-theoretical features of metabolic networks and demonstrated a decreasing level of co-expression with increasing network distance, a naïve, but widely used, topological index. Others have suggested that static graph representations can poorly capture dynamic functional associations, e.g., in the form of dependence of metabolic fluxes across genes in the network. Here, we systematically tested the relative importance of metabolic flux coupling and network position on gene co-regulation, using a genome-scale metabolic model of Escherichia coli. After validating the computational method with empirical data on flux correlations, we confirm that genes coupled by their enzymatic fluxes not only show similar expression patterns, but also share transcriptional regulators and frequently reside in the same operon. In contrast, we demonstrate that network distance per se has relatively minor influence on gene co-regulation. Moreover, the type of flux coupling can explain refined properties of the regulatory network that are ignored by simple graph-theoretical indices. Our results underline the importance of studying functional states of cellular networks to define physiologically relevant associations between genes and should stimulate future developments of novel functional genomic tools.

  3. NavMol 3.0: enabling the representation of metabolic reactions by blind users.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Binev, Yuri; Peixoto, Daniela; Pereira, Florbela; Rodrigues, Ian; Cavaco, Sofia; Lobo, Ana M; Aires-de-Sousa, João

    2018-01-01

    The representation of metabolic reactions strongly relies on visualization, which is a major barrier for blind users. The NavMol software renders the communication and interpretation of molecular structures and reactions accessible by integrating chemoinformatics and assistive technology. NavMol 3.0 provides a molecular editor for metabolic reactions. The user can start with templates of reactions and build from such cores. Atom-to-atom mapping enables changes in the reactants to be reflected in the products (and vice-versa) and the reaction centres to be automatically identified. Blind users can easily interact with the software using the keyboard and text-to-speech technology. NavMol 3.0 is free and open source under the GNU general public license (GPLv3), and can be downloaded at http://sourceforge.net/projects/navmol as a JAR file. joao@airesdesousa.com. © The Author (2017). Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com

  4. Data-driven integration of genome-scale regulatory and metabolic network models

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Saheed eImam

    2015-05-01

    Full Text Available Microbes are diverse and extremely versatile organisms that play vital roles in all ecological niches. Understanding and harnessing microbial systems will be key to the sustainability of our planet. One approach to improving our knowledge of microbial processes is through data-driven and mechanism-informed computational modeling. Individual models of biological networks (such as metabolism, transcription and signaling have played pivotal roles in driving microbial research through the years. These networks, however, are highly interconnected and function in concert – a fact that has led to the development of a variety of approaches aimed at simulating the integrated functions of two or more network types. Though the task of integrating these different models is fraught with new challenges, the large amounts of high-throughput data sets being generated, and algorithms being developed, means that the time is at hand for concerted efforts to build integrated regulatory-metabolic networks in a data-driven fashion. In this perspective, we review current approaches for constructing integrated regulatory-metabolic models and outline new strategies for future development of these network models for any microbial system.

  5. Formal balancing of chemical reaction networks

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    van der Schaft, Abraham; Rao, S.; Jayawardhana, B.

    2016-01-01

    In this paper we recall and extend the main results of Van der Schaft, Rao, Jayawardhana (2015) concerning the use of Kirchhoff’s Matrix Tree theorem in the explicit characterization of complex-balanced reaction networks and the notion of formal balancing. The notion of formal balancing corresponds

  6. Construction of a Genome-Scale Metabolic Model of Arthrospira platensis NIES-39 and Metabolic Design for Cyanobacterial Bioproduction.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Katsunori Yoshikawa

    Full Text Available Arthrospira (Spirulina platensis is a promising feedstock and host strain for bioproduction because of its high accumulation of glycogen and superior characteristics for industrial production. Metabolic simulation using a genome-scale metabolic model and flux balance analysis is a powerful method that can be used to design metabolic engineering strategies for the improvement of target molecule production. In this study, we constructed a genome-scale metabolic model of A. platensis NIES-39 including 746 metabolic reactions and 673 metabolites, and developed novel strategies to improve the production of valuable metabolites, such as glycogen and ethanol. The simulation results obtained using the metabolic model showed high consistency with experimental results for growth rates under several trophic conditions and growth capabilities on various organic substrates. The metabolic model was further applied to design a metabolic network to improve the autotrophic production of glycogen and ethanol. Decreased flux of reactions related to the TCA cycle and phosphoenolpyruvate reaction were found to improve glycogen production. Furthermore, in silico knockout simulation indicated that deletion of genes related to the respiratory chain, such as NAD(PH dehydrogenase and cytochrome-c oxidase, could enhance ethanol production by using ammonium as a nitrogen source.

  7. Construction of phylogenetic trees by kernel-based comparative analysis of metabolic networks.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Oh, S June; Joung, Je-Gun; Chang, Jeong-Ho; Zhang, Byoung-Tak

    2006-06-06

    To infer the tree of life requires knowledge of the common characteristics of each species descended from a common ancestor as the measuring criteria and a method to calculate the distance between the resulting values of each measure. Conventional phylogenetic analysis based on genomic sequences provides information about the genetic relationships between different organisms. In contrast, comparative analysis of metabolic pathways in different organisms can yield insights into their functional relationships under different physiological conditions. However, evaluating the similarities or differences between metabolic networks is a computationally challenging problem, and systematic methods of doing this are desirable. Here we introduce a graph-kernel method for computing the similarity between metabolic networks in polynomial time, and use it to profile metabolic pathways and to construct phylogenetic trees. To compare the structures of metabolic networks in organisms, we adopted the exponential graph kernel, which is a kernel-based approach with a labeled graph that includes a label matrix and an adjacency matrix. To construct the phylogenetic trees, we used an unweighted pair-group method with arithmetic mean, i.e., a hierarchical clustering algorithm. We applied the kernel-based network profiling method in a comparative analysis of nine carbohydrate metabolic networks from 81 biological species encompassing Archaea, Eukaryota, and Eubacteria. The resulting phylogenetic hierarchies generally support the tripartite scheme of three domains rather than the two domains of prokaryotes and eukaryotes. By combining the kernel machines with metabolic information, the method infers the context of biosphere development that covers physiological events required for adaptation by genetic reconstruction. The results show that one may obtain a global view of the tree of life by comparing the metabolic pathway structures using meta-level information rather than sequence

  8. Construction of phylogenetic trees by kernel-based comparative analysis of metabolic networks

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Chang Jeong-Ho

    2006-06-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background To infer the tree of life requires knowledge of the common characteristics of each species descended from a common ancestor as the measuring criteria and a method to calculate the distance between the resulting values of each measure. Conventional phylogenetic analysis based on genomic sequences provides information about the genetic relationships between different organisms. In contrast, comparative analysis of metabolic pathways in different organisms can yield insights into their functional relationships under different physiological conditions. However, evaluating the similarities or differences between metabolic networks is a computationally challenging problem, and systematic methods of doing this are desirable. Here we introduce a graph-kernel method for computing the similarity between metabolic networks in polynomial time, and use it to profile metabolic pathways and to construct phylogenetic trees. Results To compare the structures of metabolic networks in organisms, we adopted the exponential graph kernel, which is a kernel-based approach with a labeled graph that includes a label matrix and an adjacency matrix. To construct the phylogenetic trees, we used an unweighted pair-group method with arithmetic mean, i.e., a hierarchical clustering algorithm. We applied the kernel-based network profiling method in a comparative analysis of nine carbohydrate metabolic networks from 81 biological species encompassing Archaea, Eukaryota, and Eubacteria. The resulting phylogenetic hierarchies generally support the tripartite scheme of three domains rather than the two domains of prokaryotes and eukaryotes. Conclusion By combining the kernel machines with metabolic information, the method infers the context of biosphere development that covers physiological events required for adaptation by genetic reconstruction. The results show that one may obtain a global view of the tree of life by comparing the metabolic pathway

  9. Studies of liver-specific metabolic reactions with 15N. 1

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Hirschberg, K.; Jung, K.; Faust, H.; Matkowitz, R.

    1987-01-01

    The 15 N tracer technique was used to investigate liver-specific reactions (urea and hippurate synthesis) for studying the metabolism in the healthy and damaged pig liver. After [ 15 N]ammonium chloride administration the tracer distribution on non-protein compounds of serum and urine was followed. Blood samplings before and after liver passage rendered possible a direct analysis of the [ 15 N]ammonium metabolism. The thioacetamide-induced liver damage was used as model for an acute liver intoxication. The capacity for urea synthesis was not influenced by means of this noxious substance, but the metabolism of amino acids and hippuric acid. The considerably depressed excretion of [ 15 N]hippurate seems to be a suitable indicator of liver disfunction. (author)

  10. SkyNet: A Modular Nuclear Reaction Network Library

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lippuner, Jonas; Roberts, Luke F.

    2017-12-01

    Almost all of the elements heavier than hydrogen that are present in our solar system were produced by nuclear burning processes either in the early universe or at some point in the life cycle of stars. In all of these environments, there are dozens to thousands of nuclear species that interact with each other to produce successively heavier elements. In this paper, we present SkyNet, a new general-purpose nuclear reaction network that evolves the abundances of nuclear species under the influence of nuclear reactions. SkyNet can be used to compute the nucleosynthesis evolution in all astrophysical scenarios where nucleosynthesis occurs. SkyNet is free and open source, and aims to be easy to use and flexible. Any list of isotopes can be evolved, and SkyNet supports different types of nuclear reactions. SkyNet is modular so that new or existing physics, like nuclear reactions or equations of state, can easily be added or modified. Here, we present in detail the physics implemented in SkyNet with a focus on a self-consistent transition to and from nuclear statistical equilibrium to non-equilibrium nuclear burning, our implementation of electron screening, and coupling of the network to an equation of state. We also present comprehensive code tests and comparisons with existing nuclear reaction networks. We find that SkyNet agrees with published results and other codes to an accuracy of a few percent. Discrepancies, where they exist, can be traced to differences in the physics implementations.

  11. Positron emission tomography for measuring metabolism in vivo

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Feinendegen, L.E.

    1985-01-01

    Nuclear medical imaging always relates to changes at the cellular or molecular level of organization of the body. For years, such changes, summarily called metabolism, permitted radionuclides as tracers to produce information on rather gross organ structure and function. Yet, more recently, increasing emphasis is placed on metabolic reactions themselves; this development is of considerable promise to the clinician, because disease begins and nearly always expresses itself by alterations of metabolism. PET greatly helps to investigate and describe in vivo individual steps within the complex network of enzyme catalized reactions that maintain life; in fact, PET allows studies of biochemistry in vivo. (Author)

  12. Stochastic Simulation of Biomolecular Reaction Networks Using the Biomolecular Network Simulator Software

    National Research Council Canada - National Science Library

    Frazier, John; Chusak, Yaroslav; Foy, Brent

    2008-01-01

    .... The software uses either exact or approximate stochastic simulation algorithms for generating Monte Carlo trajectories that describe the time evolution of the behavior of biomolecular reaction networks...

  13. Integration of Plant Metabolomics Data with Metabolic Networks: Progresses and Challenges.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Töpfer, Nadine; Seaver, Samuel M D; Aharoni, Asaph

    2018-01-01

    In the last decade, plant genome-scale modeling has developed rapidly and modeling efforts have advanced from representing metabolic behavior of plant heterotrophic cell suspensions to studying the complex interplay of cell types, tissues, and organs. A crucial driving force for such developments is the availability and integration of "omics" data (e.g., transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabolomics) which enable the reconstruction, extraction, and application of context-specific metabolic networks. In this chapter, we demonstrate a workflow to integrate gas chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry (GC-MS)-based metabolomics data of tomato fruit pericarp (flesh) tissue, at five developmental stages, with a genome-scale reconstruction of tomato metabolism. This method allows for the extraction of context-specific networks reflecting changing activities of metabolic pathways throughout fruit development and maturation.

  14. Predicting effects of structural stress in a genome-reduced model bacterial metabolism

    Science.gov (United States)

    Güell, Oriol; Sagués, Francesc; Serrano, M. Ángeles

    2012-08-01

    Mycoplasma pneumoniae is a human pathogen recently proposed as a genome-reduced model for bacterial systems biology. Here, we study the response of its metabolic network to different forms of structural stress, including removal of individual and pairs of reactions and knockout of genes and clusters of co-expressed genes. Our results reveal a network architecture as robust as that of other model bacteria regarding multiple failures, although less robust against individual reaction inactivation. Interestingly, metabolite motifs associated to reactions can predict the propagation of inactivation cascades and damage amplification effects arising in double knockouts. We also detect a significant correlation between gene essentiality and damages produced by single gene knockouts, and find that genes controlling high-damage reactions tend to be expressed independently of each other, a functional switch mechanism that, simultaneously, acts as a genetic firewall to protect metabolism. Prediction of failure propagation is crucial for metabolic engineering or disease treatment.

  15. Compartmentalized metabolic network reconstruction of microbial communities to determine the effect of agricultural intervention on soils

    Science.gov (United States)

    Álvarez-Yela, Astrid Catalina; Gómez-Cano, Fabio; Zambrano, María Mercedes; Husserl, Johana; Danies, Giovanna; Restrepo, Silvia; González-Barrios, Andrés Fernando

    2017-01-01

    Soil microbial communities are responsible for a wide range of ecological processes and have an important economic impact in agriculture. Determining the metabolic processes performed by microbial communities is crucial for understanding and managing ecosystem properties. Metagenomic approaches allow the elucidation of the main metabolic processes that determine the performance of microbial communities under different environmental conditions and perturbations. Here we present the first compartmentalized metabolic reconstruction at a metagenomics scale of a microbial ecosystem. This systematic approach conceives a meta-organism without boundaries between individual organisms and allows the in silico evaluation of the effect of agricultural intervention on soils at a metagenomics level. To characterize the microbial ecosystems, topological properties, taxonomic and metabolic profiles, as well as a Flux Balance Analysis (FBA) were considered. Furthermore, topological and optimization algorithms were implemented to carry out the curation of the models, to ensure the continuity of the fluxes between the metabolic pathways, and to confirm the metabolite exchange between subcellular compartments. The proposed models provide specific information about ecosystems that are generally overlooked in non-compartmentalized or non-curated networks, like the influence of transport reactions in the metabolic processes, especially the important effect on mitochondrial processes, as well as provide more accurate results of the fluxes used to optimize the metabolic processes within the microbial community. PMID:28767679

  16. Compartmentalized metabolic network reconstruction of microbial communities to determine the effect of agricultural intervention on soils.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    María Camila Alvarez-Silva

    Full Text Available Soil microbial communities are responsible for a wide range of ecological processes and have an important economic impact in agriculture. Determining the metabolic processes performed by microbial communities is crucial for understanding and managing ecosystem properties. Metagenomic approaches allow the elucidation of the main metabolic processes that determine the performance of microbial communities under different environmental conditions and perturbations. Here we present the first compartmentalized metabolic reconstruction at a metagenomics scale of a microbial ecosystem. This systematic approach conceives a meta-organism without boundaries between individual organisms and allows the in silico evaluation of the effect of agricultural intervention on soils at a metagenomics level. To characterize the microbial ecosystems, topological properties, taxonomic and metabolic profiles, as well as a Flux Balance Analysis (FBA were considered. Furthermore, topological and optimization algorithms were implemented to carry out the curation of the models, to ensure the continuity of the fluxes between the metabolic pathways, and to confirm the metabolite exchange between subcellular compartments. The proposed models provide specific information about ecosystems that are generally overlooked in non-compartmentalized or non-curated networks, like the influence of transport reactions in the metabolic processes, especially the important effect on mitochondrial processes, as well as provide more accurate results of the fluxes used to optimize the metabolic processes within the microbial community.

  17. Metabolic network modeling of microbial interactions in natural and engineered environmental systems

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Octavio ePerez-Garcia

    2016-05-01

    Full Text Available We review approaches to characterize metabolic interactions within microbial communities using Stoichiometric Metabolic Network (SMN models for applications in environmental and industrial biotechnology. SMN models are computational tools used to evaluate the metabolic engineering potential of various organisms. They have successfully been applied to design and optimize the microbial production of antibiotics, alcohols and amino acids by single strains. To date however, such models have been rarely applied to analyze and control the metabolism of more complex microbial communities. This is largely attributed to the diversity of microbial community functions, metabolisms and interactions. Here, we firstly review different types of microbial interaction and describe their relevance for natural and engineered environmental processes. Next, we provide a general description of the essential methods of the SMN modeling workflow including the steps of network reconstruction, simulation through Flux Balance Analysis (FBA, experimental data gathering, and model calibration. Then we broadly describe and compare four approaches to model microbial interactions using metabolic networks, i.e. i lumped networks, ii compartment per guild networks, iii bi-level optimization simulations and iv dynamic-SMN methods. These approaches can be used to integrate and analyze diverse microbial physiology, ecology and molecular community data. All of them (except the lumped approach are suitable for incorporating species abundance data but so far they have been used only to model simple communities of two to eight different species. Interactions based on substrate exchange and competition can be directly modeled using the above approaches. However, interactions based on metabolic feedbacks, such as product inhibition and synthropy require extensions to current models, incorporating gene regulation and compounding accumulation mechanisms. SMN models of microbial

  18. Zea mays iRS1563: A Comprehensive Genome-Scale Metabolic Reconstruction of Maize Metabolism

    Science.gov (United States)

    Saha, Rajib; Suthers, Patrick F.; Maranas, Costas D.

    2011-01-01

    The scope and breadth of genome-scale metabolic reconstructions have continued to expand over the last decade. Herein, we introduce a genome-scale model for a plant with direct applications to food and bioenergy production (i.e., maize). Maize annotation is still underway, which introduces significant challenges in the association of metabolic functions to genes. The developed model is designed to meet rigorous standards on gene-protein-reaction (GPR) associations, elementally and charged balanced reactions and a biomass reaction abstracting the relative contribution of all biomass constituents. The metabolic network contains 1,563 genes and 1,825 metabolites involved in 1,985 reactions from primary and secondary maize metabolism. For approximately 42% of the reactions direct literature evidence for the participation of the reaction in maize was found. As many as 445 reactions and 369 metabolites are unique to the maize model compared to the AraGEM model for A. thaliana. 674 metabolites and 893 reactions are present in Zea mays iRS1563 that are not accounted for in maize C4GEM. All reactions are elementally and charged balanced and localized into six different compartments (i.e., cytoplasm, mitochondrion, plastid, peroxisome, vacuole and extracellular). GPR associations are also established based on the functional annotation information and homology prediction accounting for monofunctional, multifunctional and multimeric proteins, isozymes and protein complexes. We describe results from performing flux balance analysis under different physiological conditions, (i.e., photosynthesis, photorespiration and respiration) of a C4 plant and also explore model predictions against experimental observations for two naturally occurring mutants (i.e., bm1 and bm3). The developed model corresponds to the largest and more complete to-date effort at cataloguing metabolism for a plant species. PMID:21755001

  19. Visualization of Metabolic Interaction Networks in Microbial Communities Using VisANT 5.0.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Brian R Granger

    2016-04-01

    Full Text Available The complexity of metabolic networks in microbial communities poses an unresolved visualization and interpretation challenge. We address this challenge in the newly expanded version of a software tool for the analysis of biological networks, VisANT 5.0. We focus in particular on facilitating the visual exploration of metabolic interaction between microbes in a community, e.g. as predicted by COMETS (Computation of Microbial Ecosystems in Time and Space, a dynamic stoichiometric modeling framework. Using VisANT's unique metagraph implementation, we show how one can use VisANT 5.0 to explore different time-dependent ecosystem-level metabolic networks. In particular, we analyze the metabolic interaction network between two bacteria previously shown to display an obligate cross-feeding interdependency. In addition, we illustrate how a putative minimal gut microbiome community could be represented in our framework, making it possible to highlight interactions across multiple coexisting species. We envisage that the "symbiotic layout" of VisANT can be employed as a general tool for the analysis of metabolism in complex microbial communities as well as heterogeneous human tissues. VisANT is freely available at: http://visant.bu.edu and COMETS at http://comets.bu.edu.

  20. Visualization of Metabolic Interaction Networks in Microbial Communities Using VisANT 5.0.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Granger, Brian R; Chang, Yi-Chien; Wang, Yan; DeLisi, Charles; Segrè, Daniel; Hu, Zhenjun

    2016-04-01

    The complexity of metabolic networks in microbial communities poses an unresolved visualization and interpretation challenge. We address this challenge in the newly expanded version of a software tool for the analysis of biological networks, VisANT 5.0. We focus in particular on facilitating the visual exploration of metabolic interaction between microbes in a community, e.g. as predicted by COMETS (Computation of Microbial Ecosystems in Time and Space), a dynamic stoichiometric modeling framework. Using VisANT's unique metagraph implementation, we show how one can use VisANT 5.0 to explore different time-dependent ecosystem-level metabolic networks. In particular, we analyze the metabolic interaction network between two bacteria previously shown to display an obligate cross-feeding interdependency. In addition, we illustrate how a putative minimal gut microbiome community could be represented in our framework, making it possible to highlight interactions across multiple coexisting species. We envisage that the "symbiotic layout" of VisANT can be employed as a general tool for the analysis of metabolism in complex microbial communities as well as heterogeneous human tissues. VisANT is freely available at: http://visant.bu.edu and COMETS at http://comets.bu.edu.

  1. Characterization of the Usage of the Serine Metabolic Network in Human Cancer

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Mahya Mehrmohamadi

    2014-11-01

    Full Text Available The serine, glycine, one-carbon (SGOC metabolic network is implicated in cancer pathogenesis, but its general functions are unknown. We carried out a computational reconstruction of the SGOC network and then characterized its expression across thousands of cancer tissues. Pathways including methylation and redox metabolism exhibited heterogeneous expression indicating a strong context dependency of their usage in tumors. From an analysis of coexpression, simultaneous up- or downregulation of nucleotide synthesis, NADPH, and glutathione synthesis was found to be a common occurrence in all cancers. Finally, we developed a method to trace the metabolic fate of serine using stable isotopes, high-resolution mass spectrometry, and a mathematical model. Although the expression of single genes didn’t appear indicative of flux, the collective expression of several genes in a given pathway allowed for successful flux prediction. Altogether, these findings identify expansive and heterogeneous functions for the SGOC metabolic network in human cancer.

  2. Computing autocatalytic sets to unravel inconsistencies in metabolic network reconstructions

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Schmidt, R.; Waschina, S.; Boettger-Schmidt, D.

    2015-01-01

    , the method we report represents a powerful tool to identify inconsistencies in large-scale metabolic networks. AVAILABILITY AND IMPLEMENTATION: The method is available as source code on http://users.minet.uni-jena.de/ approximately m3kach/ASBIG/ASBIG.zip. CONTACT: christoph.kaleta@uni-jena.de SUPPLEMENTARY...... by inherent inconsistencies and gaps. RESULTS: Here we present a novel method to validate metabolic network reconstructions based on the concept of autocatalytic sets. Autocatalytic sets correspond to collections of metabolites that, besides enzymes and a growth medium, are required to produce all biomass...... components in a metabolic model. These autocatalytic sets are well-conserved across all domains of life, and their identification in specific genome-scale reconstructions allows us to draw conclusions about potential inconsistencies in these models. The method is capable of detecting inconsistencies, which...

  3. A consensus yeast metabolic network reconstruction obtained from a community approach to systems biology

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Herrgård, Markus J.; Swainston, Neil; Dobson, Paul; Dunn, Warwick B.; Arga, K. Yalçin; Arvas, Mikko; Blüthgen, Nils; Borger, Simon; Costenoble, Roeland; Heinemann, Matthias; Hucka, Michael; Novère, Nicolas Le; Li, Peter; Liebermeister, Wolfram; Mo, Monica L.; Oliveira, Ana Paula; Petranovic, Dina; Pettifer, Stephen; Simeonidis, Evangelos; Smallbone, Kieran; Spasić, Irena; Weichart, Dieter; Brent, Roger; Broomhead, David S.; Westerhoff, Hans V.; Kırdar, Betül; Penttilä, Merja; Klipp, Edda; Palsson, Bernhard Ø.; Sauer, Uwe; Oliver, Stephen G.; Mendes, Pedro; Nielsen, Jens; Kell, Douglas B.

    2008-01-01

    Genomic data allow the large-scale manual or semi-automated assembly of metabolic network reconstructions, which provide highly curated organism-specific knowledge bases. Although several genome-scale network reconstructions describe Saccharomyces cerevisiae metabolism, they differ in scope and

  4. Dynamic brain glucose metabolism identifies anti-correlated cortical-cerebellar networks at rest.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Tomasi, Dardo G; Shokri-Kojori, Ehsan; Wiers, Corinde E; Kim, Sunny W; Demiral, Şukru B; Cabrera, Elizabeth A; Lindgren, Elsa; Miller, Gregg; Wang, Gene-Jack; Volkow, Nora D

    2017-12-01

    It remains unclear whether resting state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rfMRI) networks are associated with underlying synchrony in energy demand, as measured by dynamic 2-deoxy-2-[ 18 F]fluoroglucose (FDG) positron emission tomography (PET). We measured absolute glucose metabolism, temporal metabolic connectivity (t-MC) and rfMRI patterns in 53 healthy participants at rest. Twenty-two rfMRI networks emerged from group independent component analysis (gICA). In contrast, only two anti-correlated t-MC emerged from FDG-PET time series using gICA or seed-voxel correlations; one included frontal, parietal and temporal cortices, the other included the cerebellum and medial temporal regions. Whereas cerebellum, thalamus, globus pallidus and calcarine cortex arose as the strongest t-MC hubs, the precuneus and visual cortex arose as the strongest rfMRI hubs. The strength of the t-MC linearly increased with the metabolic rate of glucose suggesting that t-MC measures are strongly associated with the energy demand of the brain tissue, and could reflect regional differences in glucose metabolism, counterbalanced metabolic network demand, and/or differential time-varying delivery of FDG. The mismatch between metabolic and functional connectivity patterns computed as a function of time could reflect differences in the temporal characteristics of glucose metabolism as measured with PET-FDG and brain activation as measured with rfMRI.

  5. Random sampling of elementary flux modes in large-scale metabolic networks.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Machado, Daniel; Soons, Zita; Patil, Kiran Raosaheb; Ferreira, Eugénio C; Rocha, Isabel

    2012-09-15

    The description of a metabolic network in terms of elementary (flux) modes (EMs) provides an important framework for metabolic pathway analysis. However, their application to large networks has been hampered by the combinatorial explosion in the number of modes. In this work, we develop a method for generating random samples of EMs without computing the whole set. Our algorithm is an adaptation of the canonical basis approach, where we add an additional filtering step which, at each iteration, selects a random subset of the new combinations of modes. In order to obtain an unbiased sample, all candidates are assigned the same probability of getting selected. This approach avoids the exponential growth of the number of modes during computation, thus generating a random sample of the complete set of EMs within reasonable time. We generated samples of different sizes for a metabolic network of Escherichia coli, and observed that they preserve several properties of the full EM set. It is also shown that EM sampling can be used for rational strain design. A well distributed sample, that is representative of the complete set of EMs, should be suitable to most EM-based methods for analysis and optimization of metabolic networks. Source code for a cross-platform implementation in Python is freely available at http://code.google.com/p/emsampler. dmachado@deb.uminho.pt Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.

  6. Synchronization criteria for generalized reaction-diffusion neural networks via periodically intermittent control.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gan, Qintao; Lv, Tianshi; Fu, Zhenhua

    2016-04-01

    In this paper, the synchronization problem for a class of generalized neural networks with time-varying delays and reaction-diffusion terms is investigated concerning Neumann boundary conditions in terms of p-norm. The proposed generalized neural networks model includes reaction-diffusion local field neural networks and reaction-diffusion static neural networks as its special cases. By establishing a new inequality, some simple and useful conditions are obtained analytically to guarantee the global exponential synchronization of the addressed neural networks under the periodically intermittent control. According to the theoretical results, the influences of diffusion coefficients, diffusion space, and control rate on synchronization are analyzed. Finally, the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed methods are shown by simulation examples, and by choosing different diffusion coefficients, diffusion spaces, and control rates, different controlled synchronization states can be obtained.

  7. Mean field interaction in biochemical reaction networks

    KAUST Repository

    Tembine, Hamidou; Tempone, Raul; Vilanova, Pedro

    2011-01-01

    In this paper we establish a relationship between chemical dynamics and mean field game dynamics. We show that chemical reaction networks can be studied using noisy mean field limits. We provide deterministic, noisy and switching mean field limits

  8. A state of the art of metabolic networks of unicellular microalgae and cyanobacteria for biofuel production.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Baroukh, Caroline; Muñoz-Tamayo, Rafael; Steyer, Jean-Philippe; Bernard, Olivier

    2015-07-01

    The most promising and yet challenging application of microalgae and cyanobacteria is the production of renewable energy: biodiesel from microalgae triacylglycerols and bioethanol from cyanobacteria carbohydrates. A thorough understanding of microalgal and cyanobacterial metabolism is necessary to master and optimize biofuel production yields. To this end, systems biology and metabolic modeling have proven to be very efficient tools if supported by an accurate knowledge of the metabolic network. However, unlike heterotrophic microorganisms that utilize the same substrate for energy and as carbon source, microalgae and cyanobacteria require light for energy and inorganic carbon (CO2 or bicarbonate) as carbon source. This double specificity, together with the complex mechanisms of light capture, makes the representation of metabolic network nonstandard. Here, we review the existing metabolic networks of photoautotrophic microalgae and cyanobacteria. We highlight how these networks have been useful for gaining insight on photoautotrophic metabolism. Copyright © 2015 International Metabolic Engineering Society. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  9. Integration of Genome Scale Metabolic Networks and Gene Regulation of Metabolic Enzymes With Physiologically Based Pharmacokinetics.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Maldonado, Elaina M; Leoncikas, Vytautas; Fisher, Ciarán P; Moore, J Bernadette; Plant, Nick J; Kierzek, Andrzej M

    2017-11-01

    The scope of physiologically based pharmacokinetic (PBPK) modeling can be expanded by assimilation of the mechanistic models of intracellular processes from systems biology field. The genome scale metabolic networks (GSMNs) represent a whole set of metabolic enzymes expressed in human tissues. Dynamic models of the gene regulation of key drug metabolism enzymes are available. Here, we introduce GSMNs and review ongoing work on integration of PBPK, GSMNs, and metabolic gene regulation. We demonstrate example models. © 2017 The Authors CPT: Pharmacometrics & Systems Pharmacology published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of American Society for Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics.

  10. The compositional and evolutionary logic of metabolism

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Braakman, Rogier; Smith, Eric

    2013-01-01

    Metabolism is built on a foundation of organic chemistry, and employs structures and interactions at many scales. Despite these sources of complexity, metabolism also displays striking and robust regularities in the forms of modularity and hierarchy, which may be described compactly in terms of relatively few principles of composition. These regularities render metabolic architecture comprehensible as a system, and also suggests the order in which layers of that system came into existence. In addition metabolism also serves as a foundational layer in other hierarchies, up to at least the levels of cellular integration including bioenergetics and molecular replication, and trophic ecology. The recapitulation of patterns first seen in metabolism, in these higher levels, motivates us to interpret metabolism as a source of causation or constraint on many forms of organization in the biosphere. Many of the forms of modularity and hierarchy exhibited by metabolism are readily interpreted as stages in the emergence of catalytic control by living systems over organic chemistry, sometimes recapitulating or incorporating geochemical mechanisms. We identify as modules, either subsets of chemicals and reactions, or subsets of functions, that are re-used in many contexts with a conserved internal structure. At the small molecule substrate level, module boundaries are often associated with the most complex reaction mechanisms, catalyzed by highly conserved enzymes. Cofactors form a biosynthetically and functionally distinctive control layer over the small-molecule substrate. The most complex members among the cofactors are often associated with the reactions at module boundaries in the substrate networks, while simpler cofactors participate in widely generalized reactions. The highly tuned chemical structures of cofactors (sometimes exploiting distinctive properties of the elements of the periodic table) thereby act as ‘keys’ that incorporate classes of organic reactions

  11. A Computational Solution to Automatically Map Metabolite Libraries in the Context of Genome Scale Metabolic Networks.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Merlet, Benjamin; Paulhe, Nils; Vinson, Florence; Frainay, Clément; Chazalviel, Maxime; Poupin, Nathalie; Gloaguen, Yoann; Giacomoni, Franck; Jourdan, Fabien

    2016-01-01

    This article describes a generic programmatic method for mapping chemical compound libraries on organism-specific metabolic networks from various databases (KEGG, BioCyc) and flat file formats (SBML and Matlab files). We show how this pipeline was successfully applied to decipher the coverage of chemical libraries set up by two metabolomics facilities MetaboHub (French National infrastructure for metabolomics and fluxomics) and Glasgow Polyomics (GP) on the metabolic networks available in the MetExplore web server. The present generic protocol is designed to formalize and reduce the volume of information transfer between the library and the network database. Matching of metabolites between libraries and metabolic networks is based on InChIs or InChIKeys and therefore requires that these identifiers are specified in both libraries and networks. In addition to providing covering statistics, this pipeline also allows the visualization of mapping results in the context of metabolic networks. In order to achieve this goal, we tackled issues on programmatic interaction between two servers, improvement of metabolite annotation in metabolic networks and automatic loading of a mapping in genome scale metabolic network analysis tool MetExplore. It is important to note that this mapping can also be performed on a single or a selection of organisms of interest and is thus not limited to large facilities.

  12. A Data-Driven Sparse-Learning Approach to Model Reduction in Chemical Reaction Networks

    OpenAIRE

    Harirchi, Farshad; Khalil, Omar A.; Liu, Sijia; Elvati, Paolo; Violi, Angela; Hero, Alfred O.

    2017-01-01

    In this paper, we propose an optimization-based sparse learning approach to identify the set of most influential reactions in a chemical reaction network. This reduced set of reactions is then employed to construct a reduced chemical reaction mechanism, which is relevant to chemical interaction network modeling. The problem of identifying influential reactions is first formulated as a mixed-integer quadratic program, and then a relaxation method is leveraged to reduce the computational comple...

  13. Comparison of TiO2 photocatalysis, electrochemically assisted Fenton reaction and direct electrochemistry for simulation of phase I metabolism reactions of drugs.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ruokolainen, Miina; Gul, Turan; Permentier, Hjalmar; Sikanen, Tiina; Kostiainen, Risto; Kotiaho, Tapio

    2016-02-15

    The feasibility of titanium dioxide (TiO2) photocatalysis, electrochemically assisted Fenton reaction (EC-Fenton) and direct electrochemical oxidation (EC) for simulation of phase I metabolism of drugs was studied by comparing the reaction products of buspirone, promazine, testosterone and 7-ethoxycoumarin with phase I metabolites of the same compounds produced in vitro by human liver microsomes (HLM). Reaction products were analysed by UHPLC-MS. TiO2 photocatalysis simulated the in vitro phase I metabolism in HLM more comprehensively than did EC-Fenton or EC. Even though TiO2 photocatalysis, EC-Fenton and EC do not allow comprehensive prediction of phase I metabolism, all three methods produce several important metabolites without the need for demanding purification steps to remove the biological matrix. Importantly, TiO2 photocatalysis produces aliphatic and aromatic hydroxylation products where direct EC fails. Furthermore, TiO2 photocatalysis is an extremely rapid, simple and inexpensive way to generate oxidation products in a clean matrix and the reaction can be simply initiated and quenched by switching the UV lamp on/off. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  14. Estimation of the number of extreme pathways for metabolic networks

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Thiele Ines

    2007-09-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background The set of extreme pathways (ExPa, {pi}, defines the convex basis vectors used for the mathematical characterization of the null space of the stoichiometric matrix for biochemical reaction networks. ExPa analysis has been used for a number of studies to determine properties of metabolic networks as well as to obtain insight into their physiological and functional states in silico. However, the number of ExPas, p = |{pi}|, grows with the size and complexity of the network being studied, and this poses a computational challenge. For this study, we investigated the relationship between the number of extreme pathways and simple network properties. Results We established an estimating function for the number of ExPas using these easily obtainable network measurements. In particular, it was found that log [p] had an exponential relationship with log⁡[∑i=1Rd−id+ici] MathType@MTEF@5@5@+=feaafiart1ev1aaatCvAUfKttLearuWrP9MDH5MBPbIqV92AaeXatLxBI9gBaebbnrfifHhDYfgasaacH8akY=wiFfYdH8Gipec8Eeeu0xXdbba9frFj0=OqFfea0dXdd9vqai=hGuQ8kuc9pgc9s8qqaq=dirpe0xb9q8qiLsFr0=vr0=vr0dc8meaabaqaciaacaGaaeqabaqabeGadaaakeaacyGGSbaBcqGGVbWBcqGGNbWzdaWadaqaamaaqadabaGaemizaq2aaSbaaSqaaiabgkHiTmaaBaaameaacqWGPbqAaeqaaaWcbeaakiabdsgaKnaaBaaaleaacqGHRaWkdaWgaaadbaGaemyAaKgabeaaaSqabaGccqWGJbWydaWgaaWcbaGaemyAaKgabeaaaeaacqWGPbqAcqGH9aqpcqaIXaqmaeaacqWGsbGua0GaeyyeIuoaaOGaay5waiaaw2faaaaa@4414@, where R = |Reff| is the number of active reactions in a network, d−i MathType@MTEF@5@5@+=feaafiart1ev1aaatCvAUfKttLearuWrP9MDH5MBPbIqV92AaeXatLxBI9gBaebbnrfifHhDYfgasaacH8akY=wiFfYdH8Gipec8Eeeu0xXdbba9frFj0=OqFfea0dXdd9vqai=hGuQ8kuc9pgc9s8qqaq=dirpe0xb9q8qiLsFr0=vr0=vr0dc8meaabaqaciaacaGaaeqabaqabeGadaaakeaacqWGKbazdaWgaaWcbaGaeyOeI0YaaSbaaWqaaiabdMgaPbqabaaaleqaaaaa@30A9@ and d+i MathType@MTEF@5@5@+=feaafiart1ev1aaatCvAUfKttLearuWrP9MDH5MBPbIqV92AaeXatLxBI9gBaebbnrfifHhDYfgasaacH8akY=wiFfYdH8Gipec8Eeeu0xXdbba9frFj0=OqFfea0dXdd9vqai=hGuQ8kuc9pgc9s8qqaq=dirpe0xb

  15. Optimization of a blueprint for in vitro glycolysis by metabolic real-time analysis

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Bujara, Matthias; Schümperli, Michael; Pellaux, René; Heinemann, Matthias; Panke, Sven

    Recruiting complex metabolic reaction networks for chemical synthesis has attracted considerable attention but frequently requires optimization of network composition and dynamics to reach sufficient productivity. As a design framework to predict optimal levels for all enzymes in the network is

  16. Internet Databases of the Properties, Enzymatic Reactions, and Metabolism of Small Molecules—Search Options and Applications in Food Science

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Piotr Minkiewicz

    2016-12-01

    Full Text Available Internet databases of small molecules, their enzymatic reactions, and metabolism have emerged as useful tools in food science. Database searching is also introduced as part of chemistry or enzymology courses for food technology students. Such resources support the search for information about single compounds and facilitate the introduction of secondary analyses of large datasets. Information can be retrieved from databases by searching for the compound name or structure, annotating with the help of chemical codes or drawn using molecule editing software. Data mining options may be enhanced by navigating through a network of links and cross-links between databases. Exemplary databases reviewed in this article belong to two classes: tools concerning small molecules (including general and specialized databases annotating food components and tools annotating enzymes and metabolism. Some problems associated with database application are also discussed. Data summarized in computer databases may be used for calculation of daily intake of bioactive compounds, prediction of metabolism of food components, and their biological activity as well as for prediction of interactions between food component and drugs.

  17. Abnormal metabolic brain networks in Parkinson's disease from blackboard to bedside.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Tang, Chris C; Eidelberg, David

    2010-01-01

    Metabolic imaging in the rest state has provided valuable information concerning the abnormalities of regional brain function that underlie idiopathic Parkinson's disease (PD). Moreover, network modeling procedures, such as spatial covariance analysis, have further allowed for the quantification of these changes at the systems level. In recent years, we have utilized this strategy to identify and validate three discrete metabolic networks in PD associated with the motor and cognitive manifestations of the disease. In this chapter, we will review and compare the specific functional topographies underlying parkinsonian akinesia/rigidity, tremor, and cognitive disturbance. While network activity progressed over time, the rate of change for each pattern was distinctive and paralleled the development of the corresponding clinical symptoms in early-stage patients. This approach is already showing great promise in identifying individuals with prodromal manifestations of PD and in assessing the rate of progression before clinical onset. Network modulation was found to correlate with the clinical effects of dopaminergic treatment and surgical interventions, such as subthalamic nucleus (STN) deep brain stimulation (DBS) and gene therapy. Abnormal metabolic networks have also been identified for atypical parkinsonian syndromes, such as multiple system atrophy (MSA) and progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP). Using multiple disease-related networks for PD, MSA, and PSP, we have developed a novel, fully automated algorithm for accurate classification at the single-patient level, even at early disease stages. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  18. Addressing unknown constants and metabolic network behaviors through petascale computing: understanding H2 production in green algae

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Chang, Christopher; Alber, David; Graf, Peter; Kim, Kwiseon; Seibert, Michael

    2007-01-01

    The Genomics Revolution has resulted in a massive and growing quantity of whole-genome DNA sequences, which encode the metabolic catalysts necessary for life. However, gene annotations can rarely be complete, and measurement of the kinetic constants associated with the encoded enzymes can not possibly keep pace, necessitating the use of careful modeling to explore plausible network behaviors. Key challenges are (1) quantitatively formulating kinetic laws governing each transformation in a fixed model network; (2) characterizing the stable solution (if any) of the associated ordinary differential equations (ODEs); (3) fitting the latter to metabolomics data as it becomes available; and (4) optimizing a model output against the possible space of kinetic parameters, with respect to properties such as robustness of network response, or maximum consumption/production. This SciDAC-2 project addresses this large-scale uncertainty in the genome-scale metabolic network of the water-splitting, H 2 -producing green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii. Each metabolic transformation is formulated as an irreversible steady-state process, such that the vast literature on known enzyme mechanisms may be incorporated directly. To start, glycolysis, the tricarboxylic acid cycle, and basic fermentation pathways have been encoded in Systems Biology Markup Language (SBML) with careful annotation and consistency with the KEGG database, yielding a model with 3 compartments, 95 species, 38 reactions, and 109 kinetic constants. To study and optimize such models with a view toward larger models, we have developed a system which takes as input an SBML model, and automatically produces C code that when compiled and executed optimizes the model's kinetic parameters according to test criteria. We describe the system and present numerical results. Further development, including overlaying of a parallel multistart algorithm, will allow optimization of thousands of parameters on high-performance systems

  19. Discovery of Boolean metabolic networks: integer linear programming based approach.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Qiu, Yushan; Jiang, Hao; Ching, Wai-Ki; Cheng, Xiaoqing

    2018-04-11

    Traditional drug discovery methods focused on the efficacy of drugs rather than their toxicity. However, toxicity and/or lack of efficacy are produced when unintended targets are affected in metabolic networks. Thus, identification of biological targets which can be manipulated to produce the desired effect with minimum side-effects has become an important and challenging topic. Efficient computational methods are required to identify the drug targets while incurring minimal side-effects. In this paper, we propose a graph-based computational damage model that summarizes the impact of enzymes on compounds in metabolic networks. An efficient method based on Integer Linear Programming formalism is then developed to identify the optimal enzyme-combination so as to minimize the side-effects. The identified target enzymes for known successful drugs are then verified by comparing the results with those in the existing literature. Side-effects reduction plays a crucial role in the study of drug development. A graph-based computational damage model is proposed and the theoretical analysis states the captured problem is NP-completeness. The proposed approaches can therefore contribute to the discovery of drug targets. Our developed software is available at " http://hkumath.hku.hk/~wkc/APBC2018-metabolic-network.zip ".

  20. Identifying all moiety conservation laws in genome-scale metabolic networks.

    Science.gov (United States)

    De Martino, Andrea; De Martino, Daniele; Mulet, Roberto; Pagnani, Andrea

    2014-01-01

    The stoichiometry of a metabolic network gives rise to a set of conservation laws for the aggregate level of specific pools of metabolites, which, on one hand, pose dynamical constraints that cross-link the variations of metabolite concentrations and, on the other, provide key insight into a cell's metabolic production capabilities. When the conserved quantity identifies with a chemical moiety, extracting all such conservation laws from the stoichiometry amounts to finding all non-negative integer solutions of a linear system, a programming problem known to be NP-hard. We present an efficient strategy to compute the complete set of integer conservation laws of a genome-scale stoichiometric matrix, also providing a certificate for correctness and maximality of the solution. Our method is deployed for the analysis of moiety conservation relationships in two large-scale reconstructions of the metabolism of the bacterium E. coli, in six tissue-specific human metabolic networks, and, finally, in the human reactome as a whole, revealing that bacterial metabolism could be evolutionarily designed to cover broader production spectra than human metabolism. Convergence to the full set of moiety conservation laws in each case is achieved in extremely reduced computing times. In addition, we uncover a scaling relation that links the size of the independent pool basis to the number of metabolites, for which we present an analytical explanation.

  1. Identifying all moiety conservation laws in genome-scale metabolic networks.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Andrea De Martino

    Full Text Available The stoichiometry of a metabolic network gives rise to a set of conservation laws for the aggregate level of specific pools of metabolites, which, on one hand, pose dynamical constraints that cross-link the variations of metabolite concentrations and, on the other, provide key insight into a cell's metabolic production capabilities. When the conserved quantity identifies with a chemical moiety, extracting all such conservation laws from the stoichiometry amounts to finding all non-negative integer solutions of a linear system, a programming problem known to be NP-hard. We present an efficient strategy to compute the complete set of integer conservation laws of a genome-scale stoichiometric matrix, also providing a certificate for correctness and maximality of the solution. Our method is deployed for the analysis of moiety conservation relationships in two large-scale reconstructions of the metabolism of the bacterium E. coli, in six tissue-specific human metabolic networks, and, finally, in the human reactome as a whole, revealing that bacterial metabolism could be evolutionarily designed to cover broader production spectra than human metabolism. Convergence to the full set of moiety conservation laws in each case is achieved in extremely reduced computing times. In addition, we uncover a scaling relation that links the size of the independent pool basis to the number of metabolites, for which we present an analytical explanation.

  2. Elimination of intermediate species in multiscale stochastic reaction networks

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Cappelletti, Daniele; Wiuf, Carsten

    2016-01-01

    such as the substrate-enzyme complex in the Michaelis-Menten mechanism. Such species are virtually in all real-world networks, they are typically short-lived, degraded at a fast rate and hard to observe experimentally. We provide conditions under which the Markov process of a multiscale reaction network...

  3. Improving the description of metabolic networks: the TCA cycle as example

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Stobbe, Miranda D.; Houten, Sander M.; van Kampen, Antoine H. C.; Wanders, Ronald J. A.; Moerland, Perry D.

    2012-01-01

    To collect the ever-increasing yet scattered knowledge on metabolism, multiple pathway databases like the Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes have been created. A complete and accurate description of the metabolic network for human and other organisms is essential to foster new biological

  4. Comparison of TiO2 photocatalysis, electrochemically assisted Fenton reaction and direct electrochemistry for simulation of phase I metabolism reactions of drugs

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Ruokolainen, Miina; Gül, Turan; Permentier, Hjalmar; Sikanen, Tiina; Kostiainen, Risto; Kotiaho, Tapio

    2016-01-01

    The feasibility of titanium dioxide (TiO2) photocatalysis, electrochemically assisted Fenton reaction (EC-Fenton) and direct electrochemical oxidation (EC) for simulation of phase I metabolism of drugs was studied by comparing the reaction products of buspirone, promazine, testosterone and

  5. Inferring metabolic states in uncharacterized environments using gene-expression measurements.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Sergio Rossell

    Full Text Available The large size of metabolic networks entails an overwhelming multiplicity in the possible steady-state flux distributions that are compatible with stoichiometric constraints. This space of possibilities is largest in the frequent situation where the nutrients available to the cells are unknown. These two factors: network size and lack of knowledge of nutrient availability, challenge the identification of the actual metabolic state of living cells among the myriad possibilities. Here we address this challenge by developing a method that integrates gene-expression measurements with genome-scale models of metabolism as a means of inferring metabolic states. Our method explores the space of alternative flux distributions that maximize the agreement between gene expression and metabolic fluxes, and thereby identifies reactions that are likely to be active in the culture from which the gene-expression measurements were taken. These active reactions are used to build environment-specific metabolic models and to predict actual metabolic states. We applied our method to model the metabolic states of Saccharomyces cerevisiae growing in rich media supplemented with either glucose or ethanol as the main energy source. The resulting models comprise about 50% of the reactions in the original model, and predict environment-specific essential genes with high sensitivity. By minimizing the sum of fluxes while forcing our predicted active reactions to carry flux, we predicted the metabolic states of these yeast cultures that are in large agreement with what is known about yeast physiology. Most notably, our method predicts the Crabtree effect in yeast cells growing in excess glucose, a long-known phenomenon that could not have been predicted by traditional constraint-based modeling approaches. Our method is of immediate practical relevance for medical and industrial applications, such as the identification of novel drug targets, and the development of

  6. Optimality principles in the regulation of metabolic networks.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Berkhout, Jan; Bruggeman, Frank J; Teusink, Bas

    2012-08-29

    One of the challenging tasks in systems biology is to understand how molecular networks give rise to emergent functionality and whether universal design principles apply to molecular networks. To achieve this, the biophysical, evolutionary and physiological constraints that act on those networks need to be identified in addition to the characterisation of the molecular components and interactions. Then, the cellular "task" of the network-its function-should be identified. A network contributes to organismal fitness through its function. The premise is that the same functions are often implemented in different organisms by the same type of network; hence, the concept of design principles. In biology, due to the strong forces of selective pressure and natural selection, network functions can often be understood as the outcome of fitness optimisation. The hypothesis of fitness optimisation to understand the design of a network has proven to be a powerful strategy. Here, we outline the use of several optimisation principles applied to biological networks, with an emphasis on metabolic regulatory networks. We discuss the different objective functions and constraints that are considered and the kind of understanding that they provide.

  7. Model reduction of detailed-balanced reaction networks by clustering linkage classes

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Rao, Shodhan; Jayawardhana, Bayu; van der Schaft, Abraham; Findeisen, Rolf; Bullinger, Eric; Balsa-Canto, Eva; Bernaerts, Kristel

    2016-01-01

    We propose a model reduction method that involves sequential application of clustering of linkage classes and Kron reduction. This approach is specifically useful for chemical reaction networks with each linkage class having less number of reactions. In case of detailed balanced chemical reaction

  8. Reconstruction and Analysis of Human Kidney-Specific Metabolic Network Based on Omics Data

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Ai-Di Zhang

    2013-01-01

    Full Text Available With the advent of the high-throughput data production, recent studies of tissue-specific metabolic networks have largely advanced our understanding of the metabolic basis of various physiological and pathological processes. However, for kidney, which plays an essential role in the body, the available kidney-specific model remains incomplete. This paper reports the reconstruction and characterization of the human kidney metabolic network based on transcriptome and proteome data. In silico simulations revealed that house-keeping genes were more essential than kidney-specific genes in maintaining kidney metabolism. Importantly, a total of 267 potential metabolic biomarkers for kidney-related diseases were successfully explored using this model. Furthermore, we found that the discrepancies in metabolic processes of different tissues are directly corresponding to tissue's functions. Finally, the phenotypes of the differentially expressed genes in diabetic kidney disease were characterized, suggesting that these genes may affect disease development through altering kidney metabolism. Thus, the human kidney-specific model constructed in this study may provide valuable information for the metabolism of kidney and offer excellent insights into complex kidney diseases.

  9. Mean field interaction in biochemical reaction networks

    KAUST Repository

    Tembine, Hamidou

    2011-09-01

    In this paper we establish a relationship between chemical dynamics and mean field game dynamics. We show that chemical reaction networks can be studied using noisy mean field limits. We provide deterministic, noisy and switching mean field limits and illustrate them with numerical examples. © 2011 IEEE.

  10. Thermodynamic analysis of computed pathways integrated into the metabolic networks of E. coli and Synechocystis reveals contrasting expansion potential.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Asplund-Samuelsson, Johannes; Janasch, Markus; Hudson, Elton P

    2018-01-01

    Introducing biosynthetic pathways into an organism is both reliant on and challenged by endogenous biochemistry. Here we compared the expansion potential of the metabolic network in the photoautotroph Synechocystis with that of the heterotroph E. coli using the novel workflow POPPY (Prospecting Optimal Pathways with PYthon). First, E. coli and Synechocystis metabolomic and fluxomic data were combined with metabolic models to identify thermodynamic constraints on metabolite concentrations (NET analysis). Then, thousands of automatically constructed pathways were placed within each network and subjected to a network-embedded variant of the max-min driving force analysis (NEM). We found that the networks had different capabilities for imparting thermodynamic driving forces toward certain compounds. Key metabolites were constrained differently in Synechocystis due to opposing flux directions in glycolysis and carbon fixation, the forked tri-carboxylic acid cycle, and photorespiration. Furthermore, the lysine biosynthesis pathway in Synechocystis was identified as thermodynamically constrained, impacting both endogenous and heterologous reactions through low 2-oxoglutarate levels. Our study also identified important yet poorly covered areas in existing metabolomics data and provides a reference for future thermodynamics-based engineering in Synechocystis and beyond. The POPPY methodology represents a step in making optimal pathway-host matches, which is likely to become important as the practical range of host organisms is diversified. Copyright © 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  11. Safe design and operation of tank reactors for multiple-reaction networks: uniqueness and multiplicity

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Westerterp, K.R.; Westerink, E.J.

    1990-01-01

    A method is developed to design a tank reactor in which a network of reactions is carried out. The network is a combination of parallel and consecutive reactions. The method ensures unique operation. Dimensionless groups are used which are either representative of properties of the reaction system

  12. Recent developments in research on catalytic reaction networks

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Roberto Serra

    2013-09-01

    Full Text Available Over the last years, analyses performed on a stochastic model of catalytic reaction networks have provided some indications about the reasons why wet-lab experiments hardly ever comply with the phase transition typically predicted by theoretical models with regard to the emergence of collectively self-replicating sets of molecule (also defined as autocatalytic sets, ACSs, a phenomenon that is often observed in nature and that is supposed to have played a major role in the emergence of the primitive forms of life. The model at issue has allowed to reveal that the emerging ACSs are characterized by a general dynamical fragility, which might explain the difficulty to observe them in lab experiments. In this work, the main results of the various analyses are reviewed, with particular regard to the factors able to affect the generic properties of catalytic reactions network, for what concerns, not only the probability of ACSs to be observed, but also the overall activity of the system, in terms of production of new species, reactions and matter.

  13. Optimality Principles in the Regulation of Metabolic Networks

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Jan Berkhout

    2012-08-01

    Full Text Available One of the challenging tasks in systems biology is to understand how molecular networks give rise to emergent functionality and whether universal design principles apply to molecular networks. To achieve this, the biophysical, evolutionary and physiological constraints that act on those networks need to be identified in addition to the characterisation of the molecular components and interactions. Then, the cellular “task” of the network—its function—should be identified. A network contributes to organismal fitness through its function. The premise is that the same functions are often implemented in different organisms by the same type of network; hence, the concept of design principles. In biology, due to the strong forces of selective pressure and natural selection, network functions can often be understood as the outcome of fitness optimisation. The hypothesis of fitness optimisation to understand the design of a network has proven to be a powerful strategy. Here, we outline the use of several optimisation principles applied to biological networks, with an emphasis on metabolic regulatory networks. We discuss the different objective functions and constraints that are considered and the kind of understanding that they provide.

  14. Comparing chemical reaction networks

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Cardelli, Luca; Tribastone, Mirco; Tschaikowski, Max

    2017-01-01

    We study chemical reaction networks (CRNs) as a kernel model of concurrency provided with semantics based on ordinary differential equations. We investigate the problem of comparing two CRNs, i.e., to decide whether the solutions of a source and of a target CRN can be matched for an appropriate...... choice of initial conditions. Using a categorical framework, we extend and unify model-comparison approaches based on dynamical (semantic) and structural (syntactic) properties of CRNs. Then, we provide an algorithm to compare CRNs, running linearly in time with respect to the cardinality of all possible...... comparisons. Finally, using a prototype implementation, CAGE, we apply our results to biological models from the literature....

  15. Sequential computation of elementary modes and minimal cut sets in genome-scale metabolic networks using alternate integer linear programming

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Song, Hyun-Seob; Goldberg, Noam; Mahajan, Ashutosh; Ramkrishna, Doraiswami

    2017-03-27

    Elementary (flux) modes (EMs) have served as a valuable tool for investigating structural and functional properties of metabolic networks. Identification of the full set of EMs in genome-scale networks remains challenging due to combinatorial explosion of EMs in complex networks. It is often, however, that only a small subset of relevant EMs needs to be known, for which optimization-based sequential computation is a useful alternative. Most of the currently available methods along this line are based on the iterative use of mixed integer linear programming (MILP), the effectiveness of which significantly deteriorates as the number of iterations builds up. To alleviate the computational burden associated with the MILP implementation, we here present a novel optimization algorithm termed alternate integer linear programming (AILP). Results: Our algorithm was designed to iteratively solve a pair of integer programming (IP) and linear programming (LP) to compute EMs in a sequential manner. In each step, the IP identifies a minimal subset of reactions, the deletion of which disables all previously identified EMs. Thus, a subsequent LP solution subject to this reaction deletion constraint becomes a distinct EM. In cases where no feasible LP solution is available, IP-derived reaction deletion sets represent minimal cut sets (MCSs). Despite the additional computation of MCSs, AILP achieved significant time reduction in computing EMs by orders of magnitude. The proposed AILP algorithm not only offers a computational advantage in the EM analysis of genome-scale networks, but also improves the understanding of the linkage between EMs and MCSs.

  16. Limitations of a metabolic network-based reverse ecology method for inferring host-pathogen interactions.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Takemoto, Kazuhiro; Aie, Kazuki

    2017-05-25

    Host-pathogen interactions are important in a wide range of research fields. Given the importance of metabolic crosstalk between hosts and pathogens, a metabolic network-based reverse ecology method was proposed to infer these interactions. However, the validity of this method remains unclear because of the various explanations presented and the influence of potentially confounding factors that have thus far been neglected. We re-evaluated the importance of the reverse ecology method for evaluating host-pathogen interactions while statistically controlling for confounding effects using oxygen requirement, genome, metabolic network, and phylogeny data. Our data analyses showed that host-pathogen interactions were more strongly influenced by genome size, primary network parameters (e.g., number of edges), oxygen requirement, and phylogeny than the reserve ecology-based measures. These results indicate the limitations of the reverse ecology method; however, they do not discount the importance of adopting reverse ecology approaches altogether. Rather, we highlight the need for developing more suitable methods for inferring host-pathogen interactions and conducting more careful examinations of the relationships between metabolic networks and host-pathogen interactions.

  17. Quantitative Tools for Dissection of Hydrogen-Producing Metabolic Networks-Final Report

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Rabinowitz, Joshua D.; Dismukes, G.Charles.; Rabitz, Herschel A.; Amador-Noguez, Daniel

    2012-10-19

    During this project we have pioneered the development of integrated experimental-computational technologies for the quantitative dissection of metabolism in hydrogen and biofuel producing microorganisms (i.e. C. acetobutylicum and various cyanobacteria species). The application of these new methodologies resulted in many significant advances in the understanding of the metabolic networks and metabolism of these organisms, and has provided new strategies to enhance their hydrogen or biofuel producing capabilities. As an example, using mass spectrometry, isotope tracers, and quantitative flux-modeling we mapped the metabolic network structure in C. acetobutylicum. This resulted in a comprehensive and quantitative understanding of central carbon metabolism that could not have been obtained using genomic data alone. We discovered that biofuel production in this bacterium, which only occurs during stationary phase, requires a global remodeling of central metabolism (involving large changes in metabolite concentrations and fluxes) that has the effect of redirecting resources (carbon and reducing power) from biomass production into solvent production. This new holistic, quantitative understanding of metabolism is now being used as the basis for metabolic engineering strategies to improve solvent production in this bacterium. In another example, making use of newly developed technologies for monitoring hydrogen and NAD(P)H levels in vivo, we dissected the metabolic pathways for photobiological hydrogen production by cyanobacteria Cyanothece sp. This investigation led to the identification of multiple targets for improving hydrogen production. Importantly, the quantitative tools and approaches that we have developed are broadly applicable and we are now using them to investigate other important biofuel producers, such as cellulolytic bacteria.

  18. Addressing unknown constants and metabolic network behaviors through petascale computing: understanding H{sub 2} production in green algae

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Chang, Christopher; Alber, David; Graf, Peter; Kim, Kwiseon; Seibert, Michael [National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Golden, CO 80401 (United States)

    2007-07-15

    The Genomics Revolution has resulted in a massive and growing quantity of whole-genome DNA sequences, which encode the metabolic catalysts necessary for life. However, gene annotations can rarely be complete, and measurement of the kinetic constants associated with the encoded enzymes can not possibly keep pace, necessitating the use of careful modeling to explore plausible network behaviors. Key challenges are (1) quantitatively formulating kinetic laws governing each transformation in a fixed model network; (2) characterizing the stable solution (if any) of the associated ordinary differential equations (ODEs); (3) fitting the latter to metabolomics data as it becomes available; and (4) optimizing a model output against the possible space of kinetic parameters, with respect to properties such as robustness of network response, or maximum consumption/production. This SciDAC-2 project addresses this large-scale uncertainty in the genome-scale metabolic network of the water-splitting, H{sub 2}-producing green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii. Each metabolic transformation is formulated as an irreversible steady-state process, such that the vast literature on known enzyme mechanisms may be incorporated directly. To start, glycolysis, the tricarboxylic acid cycle, and basic fermentation pathways have been encoded in Systems Biology Markup Language (SBML) with careful annotation and consistency with the KEGG database, yielding a model with 3 compartments, 95 species, 38 reactions, and 109 kinetic constants. To study and optimize such models with a view toward larger models, we have developed a system which takes as input an SBML model, and automatically produces C code that when compiled and executed optimizes the model's kinetic parameters according to test criteria. We describe the system and present numerical results. Further development, including overlaying of a parallel multistart algorithm, will allow optimization of thousands of parameters on high

  19. MicrobesFlux: a web platform for drafting metabolic models from the KEGG database

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Feng Xueyang

    2012-08-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background Concurrent with the efforts currently underway in mapping microbial genomes using high-throughput sequencing methods, systems biologists are building metabolic models to characterize and predict cell metabolisms. One of the key steps in building a metabolic model is using multiple databases to collect and assemble essential information about genome-annotations and the architecture of the metabolic network for a specific organism. To speed up metabolic model development for a large number of microorganisms, we need a user-friendly platform to construct metabolic networks and to perform constraint-based flux balance analysis based on genome databases and experimental results. Results We have developed a semi-automatic, web-based platform (MicrobesFlux for generating and reconstructing metabolic models for annotated microorganisms. MicrobesFlux is able to automatically download the metabolic network (including enzymatic reactions and metabolites of ~1,200 species from the KEGG database (Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes and then convert it to a metabolic model draft. The platform also provides diverse customized tools, such as gene knockouts and the introduction of heterologous pathways, for users to reconstruct the model network. The reconstructed metabolic network can be formulated to a constraint-based flux model to predict and analyze the carbon fluxes in microbial metabolisms. The simulation results can be exported in the SBML format (The Systems Biology Markup Language. Furthermore, we also demonstrated the platform functionalities by developing an FBA model (including 229 reactions for a recent annotated bioethanol producer, Thermoanaerobacter sp. strain X514, to predict its biomass growth and ethanol production. Conclusion MicrobesFlux is an installation-free and open-source platform that enables biologists without prior programming knowledge to develop metabolic models for annotated microorganisms in the KEGG

  20. A computational framework for the automated construction of glycosylation reaction networks.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Liu, Gang; Neelamegham, Sriram

    2014-01-01

    Glycosylation is among the most common and complex post-translational modifications identified to date. It proceeds through the catalytic action of multiple enzyme families that include the glycosyltransferases that add monosaccharides to growing glycans, and glycosidases which remove sugar residues to trim glycans. The expression level and specificity of these enzymes, in part, regulate the glycan distribution or glycome of specific cell/tissue systems. Currently, there is no systematic method to describe the enzymes and cellular reaction networks that catalyze glycosylation. To address this limitation, we present a streamlined machine-readable definition for the glycosylating enzymes and additional methodologies to construct and analyze glycosylation reaction networks. In this computational framework, the enzyme class is systematically designed to store detailed specificity data such as enzymatic functional group, linkage and substrate specificity. The new classes and their associated functions enable both single-reaction inference and automated full network reconstruction, when given a list of reactants and/or products along with the enzymes present in the system. In addition, graph theory is used to support functions that map the connectivity between two or more species in a network, and that generate subset models to identify rate-limiting steps regulating glycan biosynthesis. Finally, this framework allows the synthesis of biochemical reaction networks using mass spectrometry (MS) data. The features described above are illustrated using three case studies that examine: i) O-linked glycan biosynthesis during the construction of functional selectin-ligands; ii) automated N-linked glycosylation pathway construction; and iii) the handling and analysis of glycomics based MS data. Overall, the new computational framework enables automated glycosylation network model construction and analysis by integrating knowledge of glycan structure and enzyme biochemistry. All

  1. A computational framework for the automated construction of glycosylation reaction networks.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Gang Liu

    Full Text Available Glycosylation is among the most common and complex post-translational modifications identified to date. It proceeds through the catalytic action of multiple enzyme families that include the glycosyltransferases that add monosaccharides to growing glycans, and glycosidases which remove sugar residues to trim glycans. The expression level and specificity of these enzymes, in part, regulate the glycan distribution or glycome of specific cell/tissue systems. Currently, there is no systematic method to describe the enzymes and cellular reaction networks that catalyze glycosylation. To address this limitation, we present a streamlined machine-readable definition for the glycosylating enzymes and additional methodologies to construct and analyze glycosylation reaction networks. In this computational framework, the enzyme class is systematically designed to store detailed specificity data such as enzymatic functional group, linkage and substrate specificity. The new classes and their associated functions enable both single-reaction inference and automated full network reconstruction, when given a list of reactants and/or products along with the enzymes present in the system. In addition, graph theory is used to support functions that map the connectivity between two or more species in a network, and that generate subset models to identify rate-limiting steps regulating glycan biosynthesis. Finally, this framework allows the synthesis of biochemical reaction networks using mass spectrometry (MS data. The features described above are illustrated using three case studies that examine: i O-linked glycan biosynthesis during the construction of functional selectin-ligands; ii automated N-linked glycosylation pathway construction; and iii the handling and analysis of glycomics based MS data. Overall, the new computational framework enables automated glycosylation network model construction and analysis by integrating knowledge of glycan structure and enzyme

  2. Estimation of parameter sensitivities for stochastic reaction networks

    KAUST Repository

    Gupta, Ankit

    2016-01-01

    Quantification of the effects of parameter uncertainty is an important and challenging problem in Systems Biology. We consider this problem in the context of stochastic models of biochemical reaction networks where the dynamics is described as a

  3. The Forward-Reverse Algorithm for Stochastic Reaction Networks

    KAUST Repository

    Bayer, Christian; Moraes, Alvaro; Tempone, Raul; Vilanova, Pedro

    2015-01-01

    In this work, we present an extension of the forward-reverse algorithm by Bayer and Schoenmakers [2] to the context of stochastic reaction networks (SRNs). We then apply this bridge-generation technique to the statistical inference problem

  4. Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease candidate gene prioritization based on metabolic networks and functional information.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Xinyan Wang

    Full Text Available Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD is a multi-factor disease, in which metabolic disturbances played important roles. In this paper, functional information was integrated into a COPD-related metabolic network to assess similarity between genes. Then a gene prioritization method was applied to the COPD-related metabolic network to prioritize COPD candidate genes. The gene prioritization method was superior to ToppGene and ToppNet in both literature validation and functional enrichment analysis. Top-ranked genes prioritized from the metabolic perspective with functional information could promote the better understanding about the molecular mechanism of this disease. Top 100 genes might be potential markers for diagnostic and effective therapies.

  5. Features of metabolic reactions to various water-salt loads in female rats

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Anatoliy I Gozhenko

    2018-04-01

    Full Text Available Background. In the previous article we reported that screening registered parameters of water-salt, nitrous and lipid metabolism as well as the neuroendocrine-immune complex found 42 among them who in rats subjected to various water-salt loads, significantly different from that of intact rats, but on average the same group of animals that received liquids with different mineralization and chemical composition. The purpose of this article is to find out the features of the reactions of the parameters of metabolism. Materials and methods. Experiment was performed on 58 healthy female Wistar rats 240-290 g divided into 6 groups. Animals of the first group remained intact, using tap water from drinking ad libitum. Instead, the other rats received the same tap water as well as waters Sophiya, Naftussya, Gertsa and its artificial salt analogue through the probe at a dose of 1,5 mL/100 g of body mass for 6 days. The day after the completion of the drinking course in all rats the parameters of water-salt, nitrous and lipid metabolism were registered. Results. Found that 16 metabolic parameters the maximum deviates from the level of intact rats under the influence of the salt analogue of Gertsa water, a smaller, but tangible effect is made by the Gertsa native water, even less effective waters Sofiya and Naftussya, instead of ordinary water is almost ineffective in relation to these metabolic parameters. The other 19 parameters deviates to a maximum extent from the reference level after the use of water Naftussya, fresh water is less effective, whereas quasi-isotonic liquids are practically inactive for these parameters. The remaining 13 parameters in animals that use normal water, deviates from intact control to the same extent as in the previous pattern, which, apparently, is also due to the stressful effects of the load course. Both Naftussya and Gertsa water and its salt analogue prevent the stress deviations of these parameters. Instead, by

  6. Isotopically nonstationary metabolic flux analysis (INST-MFA) of photosynthesis and photorespiration in plants

    Science.gov (United States)

    Photorespiration is a central component of photosynthesis; however to better understand its role it should be viewed in the context of an integrated metabolic network rather than a series of individual reactions that operate independently. Isotopically nonstationary 13C metabolic flux analysis (INST...

  7. Combined metabolomic and correlation networks analyses reveal fumarase insufficiency altered amino acid metabolism.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hou, Entai; Li, Xian; Liu, Zerong; Zhang, Fuchang; Tian, Zhongmin

    2018-04-01

    Fumarase catalyzes the interconversion of fumarate and l-malate in the tricarboxylic acid cycle. Fumarase insufficiencies were associated with increased levels of fumarate, decreased levels of malate and exacerbated salt-induced hypertension. To gain insights into the metabolism profiles induced by fumarase insufficiency and identify key regulatory metabolites, we applied a GC-MS based metabolomics platform coupled with a network approach to analyze fumarase insufficient human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVEC) and negative controls. A total of 24 altered metabolites involved in seven metabolic pathways were identified as significantly altered, and enriched for the biological module of amino acids metabolism. In addition, Pearson correlation network analysis revealed that fumaric acid, l-malic acid, l-aspartic acid, glycine and l-glutamic acid were hub metabolites according to Pagerank based on their three centrality indices. Alanine aminotransferase and glutamate dehydrogenase activities increased significantly in fumarase deficiency HUVEC. These results confirmed that fumarase insufficiency altered amino acid metabolism. The combination of metabolomics and network methods would provide another perspective on expounding the molecular mechanism at metabolomics level. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  8. Stochastic analysis of complex reaction networks using binomial moment equations.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Barzel, Baruch; Biham, Ofer

    2012-09-01

    The stochastic analysis of complex reaction networks is a difficult problem because the number of microscopic states in such systems increases exponentially with the number of reactive species. Direct integration of the master equation is thus infeasible and is most often replaced by Monte Carlo simulations. While Monte Carlo simulations are a highly effective tool, equation-based formulations are more amenable to analytical treatment and may provide deeper insight into the dynamics of the network. Here, we present a highly efficient equation-based method for the analysis of stochastic reaction networks. The method is based on the recently introduced binomial moment equations [Barzel and Biham, Phys. Rev. Lett. 106, 150602 (2011)]. The binomial moments are linear combinations of the ordinary moments of the probability distribution function of the population sizes of the interacting species. They capture the essential combinatorics of the reaction processes reflecting their stoichiometric structure. This leads to a simple and transparent form of the equations, and allows a highly efficient and surprisingly simple truncation scheme. Unlike ordinary moment equations, in which the inclusion of high order moments is prohibitively complicated, the binomial moment equations can be easily constructed up to any desired order. The result is a set of equations that enables the stochastic analysis of complex reaction networks under a broad range of conditions. The number of equations is dramatically reduced from the exponential proliferation of the master equation to a polynomial (and often quadratic) dependence on the number of reactive species in the binomial moment equations. The aim of this paper is twofold: to present a complete derivation of the binomial moment equations; to demonstrate the applicability of the moment equations for a representative set of example networks, in which stochastic effects play an important role.

  9. Integration of expression data in genome-scale metabolic network reconstructions

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Anna S. Blazier

    2012-08-01

    Full Text Available With the advent of high-throughput technologies, the field of systems biology has amassed an abundance of omics data, quantifying thousands of cellular components across a variety of scales, ranging from mRNA transcript levels to metabolite quantities. Methods are needed to not only integrate this omics data but to also use this data to heighten the predictive capabilities of computational models. Several recent studies have successfully demonstrated how flux balance analysis (FBA, a constraint-based modeling approach, can be used to integrate transcriptomic data into genome-scale metabolic network reconstructions to generate predictive computational models. In this review, we summarize such FBA-based methods for integrating expression data into genome-scale metabolic network reconstructions, highlighting their advantages as well as their limitations.

  10. Gender differences of brain glucose metabolic networks revealed by FDG-PET: evidence from a large cohort of 400 young adults.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hu, Yuxiao; Xu, Qiang; Li, Kai; Zhu, Hong; Qi, Rongfeng; Zhang, Zhiqiang; Lu, Guangming

    2013-01-01

    Gender differences of the human brain are an important issue in neuroscience research. In recent years, an increasing amount of evidence has been gathered from noninvasive neuroimaging studies supporting a sexual dimorphism of the human brain. However, there is a lack of imaging studies on gender differences of brain metabolic networks based on a large population sample. FDG PET data of 400 right-handed, healthy subjects, including 200 females (age: 25:45 years, mean age ± SD: 40.9 ± 3.9 years) and 200 age-matched males were obtained and analyzed in the present study. We first investigated the regional differences of brain glucose metabolism between genders using a voxel-based two-sample t-test analysis. Subsequently, we investigated the gender differences of the metabolic networks. Sixteen metabolic covariance networks using seed-based correlation were analyzed. Seven regions showing significant regional metabolic differences between genders, and nine regions conventionally used in the resting-state network studies were selected as regions-of-interest. Permutation tests were used for comparing within- and between-network connectivity between genders. Compared with the males, females showed higher metabolism in the posterior part and lower metabolism in the anterior part of the brain. Moreover, there were widely distributed patterns of the metabolic networks in the human brain. In addition, significant gender differences within and between brain glucose metabolic networks were revealed in the present study. This study provides solid data that reveal gender differences in regional brain glucose metabolism and brain glucose metabolic networks. These observations might contribute to the better understanding of the gender differences in human brain functions, and suggest that gender should be included as a covariate when designing experiments and explaining results of brain glucose metabolic networks in the control and experimental individuals or patients.

  11. Computational Modeling of Lipid Metabolism in Yeast

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Vera Schützhold

    2016-09-01

    Full Text Available Lipid metabolism is essential for all major cell functions and has recently gained increasing attention in research and health studies. However, mathematical modeling by means of classical approaches such as stoichiometric networks and ordinary differential equation systems has not yet provided satisfactory insights, due to the complexity of lipid metabolism characterized by many different species with only slight differences and by promiscuous multifunctional enzymes.Here, we present a object-oriented stochastic model approach as a way to cope with the complex lipid metabolic network. While all lipid species are treated objects in the model, they can be modified by the respective converting reactions based on reaction rules, a hybrid method that integrates benefits of agent-based and classical stochastic simulation. This approach allows to follow the dynamics of all lipid species with different fatty acids, different degrees of saturation and different headgroups over time and to analyze the effect of parameter changes, potential mutations in the catalyzing enzymes or provision of different precursors. Applied to yeast metabolism during one cell cycle period, we could analyze the distribution of all lipids to the various membranes in time-dependent manner.The presented approach allows to efficiently treat the complexity of cellular lipid metabolism and to derive conclusions on the time- and location-dependent distributions of lipid species and their properties such as saturation. It is widely applicable, easily extendable and will provide further insights in healthy and diseased states of cell metabolism.

  12. High energy reactions in normal metabolism and ageing of animals

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Avdonina, E.N.; Nesmeyanov, N.

    1983-01-01

    Processes involving reactions on highly excited states are thought to be of great importance for normal metabolism and aging. Excess energy of the organism is transferred to result in the formation of highly excited states of macromolecules. UV, visible light or ionizing radiation created partially by the organism itself can change metabolic process rates. According to the authors, aging is associated with the defects of macromolecules owing to high energy processes. Gerontological changes in biological materials result from the elimination of low molecular weight molecules and from the formation of unsaturated compounds. Crosslinking of the compounds, accumulation of collagen and connective tissues, the energetic overload of the organism are listed as important features of aging. (V.N.)

  13. Schreibersite: an effective catalyst in the formose reaction network

    Science.gov (United States)

    Pallmann, S.; Šteflová (neé Svobodová, J.; Haas, M.; Lamour, S.; Henß, A.; Trapp, O.

    2018-05-01

    We report on the ability of the meteoritic material schreibersite to catalyze the generation of higher sugars from simple carbohydrates in the formose reaction network. Since the analysis of carbonaceous meteorites like the Murchison meteorite it has become generally accepted that a substantial amount of organic material has been delivered to the early earth and, therefore, ought to be considered in scenarios for the origin(s) of life. Also for the open question of accessible phosphorus sources, an extraterrestrial material called schreibersite has been identified that is capable of releasing soluble and reactive phosphorus oxyanions that would react with organics to form for instance nucleotides and membrane associated molecules. We have reinvestigated this material using capillary electrophoresis to monitor its corrosion process in water and probed its ability to phosphorylate a wide range of organics. Although showing a poor reactivity of schreibersite, we have found that the material catalyzes the aldol reaction of small carbohydrates forming larger sugar molecules. This reaction in the formose reaction network is a prebiotically likely route to biologically relevant sugars. The results of our study present one of the first instances of connecting extraterrestrial material to prebiotic chemistry on the early earth.

  14. COEL: A Cloud-based Reaction Network Simulator

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Peter eBanda

    2016-04-01

    Full Text Available Chemical Reaction Networks (CRNs are a formalism to describe the macroscopic behavior of chemical systems. We introduce COEL, a web- and cloud-based CRN simulation framework that does not require a local installation, runs simulations on a large computational grid, provides reliable database storage, and offers a visually pleasing and intuitive user interface. We present an overview of the underlying software, the technologies, and the main architectural approaches employed. Some of COEL's key features include ODE-based simulations of CRNs and multicompartment reaction networks with rich interaction options, a built-in plotting engine, automatic DNA-strand displacement transformation and visualization, SBML/Octave/Matlab export, and a built-in genetic-algorithm-based optimization toolbox for rate constants.COEL is an open-source project hosted on GitHub (http://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.46544, which allows interested research groups to deploy it on their own sever. Regular users can simply use the web instance at no cost at http://coel-sim.org. The framework is ideally suited for a collaborative use in both research and education.

  15. Synchronization of Reaction-Diffusion Neural Networks With Dirichlet Boundary Conditions and Infinite Delays.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sheng, Yin; Zhang, Hao; Zeng, Zhigang

    2017-10-01

    This paper is concerned with synchronization for a class of reaction-diffusion neural networks with Dirichlet boundary conditions and infinite discrete time-varying delays. By utilizing theories of partial differential equations, Green's formula, inequality techniques, and the concept of comparison, algebraic criteria are presented to guarantee master-slave synchronization of the underlying reaction-diffusion neural networks via a designed controller. Additionally, sufficient conditions on exponential synchronization of reaction-diffusion neural networks with finite time-varying delays are established. The proposed criteria herein enhance and generalize some published ones. Three numerical examples are presented to substantiate the validity and merits of the obtained theoretical results.

  16. Comprehensive reconstruction and in silico analysis of Aspergillus niger genome-scale metabolic network model that accounts for 1210 ORFs.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lu, Hongzhong; Cao, Weiqiang; Ouyang, Liming; Xia, Jianye; Huang, Mingzhi; Chu, Ju; Zhuang, Yingping; Zhang, Siliang; Noorman, Henk

    2017-03-01

    Aspergillus niger is one of the most important cell factories for industrial enzymes and organic acids production. A comprehensive genome-scale metabolic network model (GSMM) with high quality is crucial for efficient strain improvement and process optimization. The lack of accurate reaction equations and gene-protein-reaction associations (GPRs) in the current best model of A. niger named GSMM iMA871, however, limits its application scope. To overcome these limitations, we updated the A. niger GSMM by combining the latest genome annotation and literature mining technology. Compared with iMA871, the number of reactions in iHL1210 was increased from 1,380 to 1,764, and the number of unique ORFs from 871 to 1,210. With the aid of our transcriptomics analysis, the existence of 63% ORFs and 68% reactions in iHL1210 can be verified when glucose was used as the only carbon source. Physiological data from chemostat cultivations, 13 C-labeled and molecular experiments from the published literature were further used to check the performance of iHL1210. The average correlation coefficients between the predicted fluxes and estimated fluxes from 13 C-labeling data were sufficiently high (above 0.89) and the prediction of cell growth on most of the reported carbon and nitrogen sources was consistent. Using the updated genome-scale model, we evaluated gene essentiality on synthetic and yeast extract medium, as well as the effects of NADPH supply on glucoamylase production in A. niger. In summary, the new A. niger GSMM iHL1210 contains significant improvements with respect to the metabolic coverage and prediction performance, which paves the way for systematic metabolic engineering of A. niger. Biotechnol. Bioeng. 2017;114: 685-695. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

  17. Adaptive Evolution of Phosphorus Metabolism in Prochlorococcus

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Casey, John R; Mardinoglu, Adil; Nielsen, Jens

    2016-01-01

    Inorganic phosphorus is scarce in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, where the high-light-adapted ecotype HLI of the marine picocyanobacterium Prochlorococcus marinus thrives. Physiological and regulatory control of phosphorus acquisition and partitioning has been observed in HLI both in culture...... and in the field; however, the optimization of phosphorus metabolism and associated gains for its phosphorus-limited-growth (PLG) phenotype have not been studied. Here, we reconstructed a genome-scale metabolic network of the HLI axenic strain MED4 (iJC568), consisting of 568 metabolic genes in relation to 794...... through drastic depletion of phosphorus-containing biomass components but also through network-wide reductions in phosphate-reaction participation and the loss of a key enzyme, succinate dehydrogenase. These alterations occur despite the stringency of having relatively few pathway redundancies...

  18. Stoichiometric Correlation Analysis: Principles of Metabolic Functionality from Metabolomics Data

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Kevin Schwahn

    2017-12-01

    Full Text Available Recent advances in metabolomics technologies have resulted in high-quality (time-resolved metabolic profiles with an increasing coverage of metabolic pathways. These data profiles represent read-outs from often non-linear dynamics of metabolic networks. Yet, metabolic profiles have largely been explored with regression-based approaches that only capture linear relationships, rendering it difficult to determine the extent to which the data reflect the underlying reaction rates and their couplings. Here we propose an approach termed Stoichiometric Correlation Analysis (SCA based on correlation between positive linear combinations of log-transformed metabolic profiles. The log-transformation is due to the evidence that metabolic networks can be modeled by mass action law and kinetics derived from it. Unlike the existing approaches which establish a relation between pairs of metabolites, SCA facilitates the discovery of higher-order dependence between more than two metabolites. By using a paradigmatic model of the tricarboxylic acid cycle we show that the higher-order dependence reflects the coupling of concentration of reactant complexes, capturing the subtle difference between the employed enzyme kinetics. Using time-resolved metabolic profiles from Arabidopsis thaliana and Escherichia coli, we show that SCA can be used to quantify the difference in coupling of reactant complexes, and hence, reaction rates, underlying the stringent response in these model organisms. By using SCA with data from natural variation of wild and domesticated wheat and tomato accession, we demonstrate that the domestication is accompanied by loss of such couplings, in these species. Therefore, application of SCA to metabolomics data from natural variation in wild and domesticated populations provides a mechanistic way to understanding domestication and its relation to metabolic networks.

  19. The Importance of Transition Metals in the Expanding Network of Microbial Metabolism in the Archean Eon

    Science.gov (United States)

    Moore, E. K.; Jelen, B. I.; Giovannelli, D.; Prabhu, A.; Raanan, H.; Falkowski, P. G.

    2017-12-01

    Deep time changes in Earth surface redox conditions, particularly due to global oxygenation, has impacted the availability of different metals and substrates that are central in biology. Oxidoreductase proteins are molecular nanomachines responsible for all biological electron transfer processes across the tree of life. These enzymes largely contain transition metals in their active sites. Microbial metabolic pathways form a global network of electron transfer, which expanded throughout the Archean eon. Older metabolisms (sulfur reduction, methanogenesis, anoxygenic photosynthesis) accessed negative redox potentials, while later evolving metabolisms (oxygenic photosynthesis, nitrification/denitrification, aerobic respiration) accessed positive redox potentials. The incorporation of different transition metals facilitated biological innovation and the expansion of the network of microbial metabolism. Network analysis was used to examine the connections between microbial taxa, metabolic pathways, crucial metallocofactors, and substrates in deep time by incorporating biosignatures preserved in the geologic record. Nitrogen fixation and aerobic respiration have the highest level of betweenness among metabolisms in the network, indicating that the oldest metabolisms are not the most central. Fe has by far the highest betweenness among metals. Clustering analysis largely separates High Metal Bacteria (HMB), Low Metal Bacteria (LMB), and Archaea showing that simple un-weighted links between taxa, metabolism, and metals have phylogenetic relevance. On average HMB have the highest betweenness among taxa, followed by Archaea and LMB. There is a correlation between the number of metallocofactors and metabolic pathways in representative bacterial taxa, but Archaea do not follow this trend. In many cases older and more recently evolved metabolisms were clustered together supporting previous findings that proliferation of metabolic pathways is not necessarily chronological.

  20. Environmental versatility promotes modularity in large scale metabolic networks

    OpenAIRE

    Samal A.; Wagner Andreas; Martin O.C.

    2011-01-01

    Abstract Background The ubiquity of modules in biological networks may result from an evolutionary benefit of a modular organization. For instance, modularity may increase the rate of adaptive evolution, because modules can be easily combined into new arrangements that may benefit their carrier. Conversely, modularity may emerge as a by-product of some trait. We here ask whether this last scenario may play a role in genome-scale metabolic networks that need to sustain life in one or more chem...

  1. Injectivity, multiple zeros, and multistationarity in reaction networks

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Feliu, Elisenda

    2015-01-01

    Polynomial dynamical systems are widely used to model and study real phenomena. In biochemistry, they are the preferred choice for modelling the concentration of chemical species in reaction networks with mass-action kinetics. These systems are typically parametrized by many (unknown) parameters...

  2. Toward a self-consistent and unitary reaction network for big bang nucleosynthesis

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Paris, Mark W.; Brown, Lowell S.; Hale, Gerald M.; Hayes-Sterbenz, Anna C.; Jungman, Gerard; Kawano, Toshihiko; Fuller, George M.; Grohs, Evan B.; Kunieda, Satoshi

    2014-01-01

    Unitarity, the mathematical expression of the conservation of probability in multichannel reactions, is an essential ingredient in the development of accurate nuclear reaction networks appropriate for nucleosynthesis in a variety of environments. We describe our ongoing program to develop a 'unitary reaction network' for the big-bang nucleosynthesis environment and look at an example of the need and power of unitary parametrizations of nuclear scattering and reaction data. Recent attention has been focused on the possible role of the 9 B compound nuclear system in the resonant destruction of 7 Li during primordial nucleosynthesis. We have studied reactions in the 9 B compound system with a multichannel, two-body unitary R-matrix code (EDA) using the known elastic and reaction data, in a four-channel treatment. The data include elastic 6 Li( 3 He, 3 He) 6 Li differential cross sections from 0.7 to 2.0 MeV, integrated reaction cross sections for energies from 0.7 to 5.0 MeV for 6 Li( 3 He,p) 8 Be* and from 0.4 to 5.0 MeV for the 6 Li( 3 He,γ) 7 Be reaction. Capture data have been added to the previous analysis with integrated cross section measurements from 0.7 to 0.825 MeV for 6 Li( 3 He,γ) 9 B. The resulting resonance parameters are compared with tabulated values from TUNL Nuclear Data Group analyses. Previously unidentified resonances are noted and the relevance of this analysis and a unitary reaction network for big-bang nucleosynthesis are emphasized. (author)

  3. Lyapunov Functions, Stationary Distributions, and Non-equilibrium Potential for Reaction Networks

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Anderson, David F; Craciun, Gheorghe; Gopalkrishnan, Manoj

    2015-01-01

    We consider the relationship between stationary distributions for stochastic models of reaction systems and Lyapunov functions for their deterministic counterparts. Specifically, we derive the well-known Lyapunov function of reaction network theory as a scaling limit of the non-equilibrium potent...

  4. On the Mathematical Structure of Balanced Chemical Reaction Networks Governed by Mass Action Kinetics

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Schaft, Arjan van der; Rao, Shodhan; Jayawardhana, Bayu

    2013-01-01

    Motivated by recent progress on the interplay between graph theory, dynamics, and systems theory, we revisit the analysis of chemical reaction networks described by mass action kinetics. For reaction networks possessing a thermodynamic equilibrium we derive a compact formulation exhibiting at the

  5. To address surface reaction network complexity using scaling relations machine learning and DFT calculations

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Ulissi, Zachary W.; Medford, Andrew J.; Bligaard, Thomas; Nørskov, Jens K.

    2017-01-01

    Surface reaction networks involving hydrocarbons exhibit enormous complexity with thousands of species and reactions for all but the very simplest of chemistries. We present a framework for optimization under uncertainty for heterogeneous catalysis reaction networks using surrogate models that are trained on the fly. The surrogate model is constructed by teaching a Gaussian process adsorption energies based on group additivity fingerprints, combined with transition-state scaling relations and a simple classifier for determining the rate-limiting step. The surrogate model is iteratively used to predict the most important reaction step to be calculated explicitly with computationally demanding electronic structure theory. Applying these methods to the reaction of syngas on rhodium(111), we identify the most likely reaction mechanism. Lastly, propagating uncertainty throughout this process yields the likelihood that the final mechanism is complete given measurements on only a subset of the entire network and uncertainty in the underlying density functional theory calculations.

  6. Human-Centered Development of an Online Social Network for Metabolic Syndrome Management.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Núñez-Nava, Jefersson; Orozco-Sánchez, Paola A; López, Diego M; Ceron, Jesus D; Alvarez-Rosero, Rosa E

    2016-01-01

    According to the International Diabetes Federation (IDF), a quarter of the world's population has Metabolic Syndrome (MS). To develop (and assess the users' degree of satisfaction of) an online social network for patients who suffer from Metabolic Syndrome, based on the recommendations and requirements of the Human-Centered Design. Following the recommendations of the ISO 9241-210 for Human-Centered Design (HCD), an online social network was designed to promote physical activity and healthy nutrition. In order to guarantee the active participation of the users during the development of the social network, a survey, an in-depth interview, a focal group, and usability tests were carried out with people suffering from MS. The study demonstrated how the different activities, recommendations, and requirements of the ISO 9241-210 are integrated into a traditional software development process. Early usability tests demonstrated that the user's acceptance and the effectiveness and efficiency of the social network are satisfactory.

  7. Preclusion of switch behavior in reaction networks with mass-action kinetics

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Feliu, Elisenda; Wiuf, C.

    2012-01-01

    We study networks taken with mass-action kinetics and provide a Jacobian criterion that applies to an arbitrary network to preclude the existence of multiple positive steady states within any stoichiometric class for any choice of rate constants. We are concerned with the characterization...... precludes the existence of degenerate steady states. Further, we relate injectivity of a network to that of the network obtained by adding outflow, or degradation, reactions for all species....

  8. A scalable computational framework for establishing long-term behavior of stochastic reaction networks.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Ankit Gupta

    2014-06-01

    Full Text Available Reaction networks are systems in which the populations of a finite number of species evolve through predefined interactions. Such networks are found as modeling tools in many biological disciplines such as biochemistry, ecology, epidemiology, immunology, systems biology and synthetic biology. It is now well-established that, for small population sizes, stochastic models for biochemical reaction networks are necessary to capture randomness in the interactions. The tools for analyzing such models, however, still lag far behind their deterministic counterparts. In this paper, we bridge this gap by developing a constructive framework for examining the long-term behavior and stability properties of the reaction dynamics in a stochastic setting. In particular, we address the problems of determining ergodicity of the reaction dynamics, which is analogous to having a globally attracting fixed point for deterministic dynamics. We also examine when the statistical moments of the underlying process remain bounded with time and when they converge to their steady state values. The framework we develop relies on a blend of ideas from probability theory, linear algebra and optimization theory. We demonstrate that the stability properties of a wide class of biological networks can be assessed from our sufficient theoretical conditions that can be recast as efficient and scalable linear programs, well-known for their tractability. It is notably shown that the computational complexity is often linear in the number of species. We illustrate the validity, the efficiency and the wide applicability of our results on several reaction networks arising in biochemistry, systems biology, epidemiology and ecology. The biological implications of the results as well as an example of a non-ergodic biological network are also discussed.

  9. Toward a self-consistent and unitary reaction network for big bang nucleosynthesis

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Paris, Mark W.; Brown, Lowell S.; Hale, Gerald M.; Hayes-Sterbenz, Anna C.; Jungman, Gerard; Kawano, Toshihiko, E-mail: mparis@lanl.gov [Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico (United States); Fuller, George M.; Grohs, Evan B. [Department of Physics, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA (United States); Kunieda, Satoshi [Nuclear Data Center, Japan Atomic Energy Agency, Tokai-mura Naka-gun, Ibaraki (Japan)

    2014-07-01

    Unitarity, the mathematical expression of the conservation of probability in multichannel reactions, is an essential ingredient in the development of accurate nuclear reaction networks appropriate for nucleosynthesis in a variety of environments. We describe our ongoing program to develop a 'unitary reaction network' for the big-bang nucleosynthesis environment and look at an example of the need and power of unitary parametrizations of nuclear scattering and reaction data. Recent attention has been focused on the possible role of the {sup 9}B compound nuclear system in the resonant destruction of {sup 7}Li during primordial nucleosynthesis. We have studied reactions in the {sup 9}B compound system with a multichannel, two-body unitary R-matrix code (EDA) using the known elastic and reaction data, in a four-channel treatment. The data include elastic {sup 6}Li({sup 3}He,{sup 3}He){sup 6}Li differential cross sections from 0.7 to 2.0 MeV, integrated reaction cross sections for energies from 0.7 to 5.0 MeV for {sup 6}Li({sup 3}He,p){sup 8}Be* and from 0.4 to 5.0 MeV for the {sup 6}Li({sup 3}He,γ){sup 7}Be reaction. Capture data have been added to the previous analysis with integrated cross section measurements from 0.7 to 0.825 MeV for {sup 6}Li({sup 3}He,γ){sup 9}B. The resulting resonance parameters are compared with tabulated values from TUNL Nuclear Data Group analyses. Previously unidentified resonances are noted and the relevance of this analysis and a unitary reaction network for big-bang nucleosynthesis are emphasized. (author)

  10. Metabolic pathway alignment between species using a comprehensive and flexible similarity measure

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    de Ridder Dick

    2008-12-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background Comparative analysis of metabolic networks in multiple species yields important information on their evolution, and has great practical value in metabolic engineering, human disease analysis, drug design etc. In this work, we aim to systematically search for conserved pathways in two species, quantify their similarities, and focus on the variations between them. Results We present an efficient framework, Metabolic Pathway Alignment and Scoring (M-PAS, for identifying and ranking conserved metabolic pathways. M-PAS aligns all reactions in entire metabolic networks of two species and assembles them into pathways, taking mismatches, gaps and crossovers into account. It uses a comprehensive scoring function, which quantifies pathway similarity such that we can focus on different pathways given different biological motivations. Using M-PAS, we detected 1198 length-four pathways fully conserved between Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Escherichia coli, and also revealed 1399 cases of a species using a unique route in otherwise highly conserved pathways. Conclusion Our method efficiently automates the process of exploring reaction arrangement possibilities, both between species and within species, to find conserved pathways. We not only reconstruct conventional pathways such as those found in KEGG, but also discover new pathway possibilities. Our results can help to generate hypotheses on missing reactions and manifest differences in highly conserved pathways, which is useful for biology and life science applications.

  11. Simulating metabolism with statistical thermodynamics.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cannon, William R

    2014-01-01

    New methods are needed for large scale modeling of metabolism that predict metabolite levels and characterize the thermodynamics of individual reactions and pathways. Current approaches use either kinetic simulations, which are difficult to extend to large networks of reactions because of the need for rate constants, or flux-based methods, which have a large number of feasible solutions because they are unconstrained by the law of mass action. This report presents an alternative modeling approach based on statistical thermodynamics. The principles of this approach are demonstrated using a simple set of coupled reactions, and then the system is characterized with respect to the changes in energy, entropy, free energy, and entropy production. Finally, the physical and biochemical insights that this approach can provide for metabolism are demonstrated by application to the tricarboxylic acid (TCA) cycle of Escherichia coli. The reaction and pathway thermodynamics are evaluated and predictions are made regarding changes in concentration of TCA cycle intermediates due to 10- and 100-fold changes in the ratio of NAD+:NADH concentrations. Finally, the assumptions and caveats regarding the use of statistical thermodynamics to model non-equilibrium reactions are discussed.

  12. Parametric sensitivity analysis for biochemical reaction networks based on pathwise information theory.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Pantazis, Yannis; Katsoulakis, Markos A; Vlachos, Dionisios G

    2013-10-22

    Stochastic modeling and simulation provide powerful predictive methods for the intrinsic understanding of fundamental mechanisms in complex biochemical networks. Typically, such mathematical models involve networks of coupled jump stochastic processes with a large number of parameters that need to be suitably calibrated against experimental data. In this direction, the parameter sensitivity analysis of reaction networks is an essential mathematical and computational tool, yielding information regarding the robustness and the identifiability of model parameters. However, existing sensitivity analysis approaches such as variants of the finite difference method can have an overwhelming computational cost in models with a high-dimensional parameter space. We develop a sensitivity analysis methodology suitable for complex stochastic reaction networks with a large number of parameters. The proposed approach is based on Information Theory methods and relies on the quantification of information loss due to parameter perturbations between time-series distributions. For this reason, we need to work on path-space, i.e., the set consisting of all stochastic trajectories, hence the proposed approach is referred to as "pathwise". The pathwise sensitivity analysis method is realized by employing the rigorously-derived Relative Entropy Rate, which is directly computable from the propensity functions. A key aspect of the method is that an associated pathwise Fisher Information Matrix (FIM) is defined, which in turn constitutes a gradient-free approach to quantifying parameter sensitivities. The structure of the FIM turns out to be block-diagonal, revealing hidden parameter dependencies and sensitivities in reaction networks. As a gradient-free method, the proposed sensitivity analysis provides a significant advantage when dealing with complex stochastic systems with a large number of parameters. In addition, the knowledge of the structure of the FIM can allow to efficiently address

  13. Global network reorganization during dynamic adaptations of Bacillus subtilis metabolism

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Buescher, Joerg Martin; Liebermeister, Wolfram; Jules, Matthieu

    2012-01-01

    Adaptation of cells to environmental changes requires dynamic interactions between metabolic and regulatory networks, but studies typically address only one or a few layers of regulation. For nutritional shifts between two preferred carbon sources of Bacillus subtilis, we combined statistical...

  14. A computational approach to extinction events in chemical reaction networks with discrete state spaces.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Johnston, Matthew D

    2017-12-01

    Recent work of Johnston et al. has produced sufficient conditions on the structure of a chemical reaction network which guarantee that the corresponding discrete state space system exhibits an extinction event. The conditions consist of a series of systems of equalities and inequalities on the edges of a modified reaction network called a domination-expanded reaction network. In this paper, we present a computational implementation of these conditions written in Python and apply the program on examples drawn from the biochemical literature. We also run the program on 458 models from the European Bioinformatics Institute's BioModels Database and report our results. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  15. Sequential computation of elementary modes and minimal cut sets in genome-scale metabolic networks using alternate integer linear programming.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Song, Hyun-Seob; Goldberg, Noam; Mahajan, Ashutosh; Ramkrishna, Doraiswami

    2017-08-01

    Elementary (flux) modes (EMs) have served as a valuable tool for investigating structural and functional properties of metabolic networks. Identification of the full set of EMs in genome-scale networks remains challenging due to combinatorial explosion of EMs in complex networks. It is often, however, that only a small subset of relevant EMs needs to be known, for which optimization-based sequential computation is a useful alternative. Most of the currently available methods along this line are based on the iterative use of mixed integer linear programming (MILP), the effectiveness of which significantly deteriorates as the number of iterations builds up. To alleviate the computational burden associated with the MILP implementation, we here present a novel optimization algorithm termed alternate integer linear programming (AILP). Our algorithm was designed to iteratively solve a pair of integer programming (IP) and linear programming (LP) to compute EMs in a sequential manner. In each step, the IP identifies a minimal subset of reactions, the deletion of which disables all previously identified EMs. Thus, a subsequent LP solution subject to this reaction deletion constraint becomes a distinct EM. In cases where no feasible LP solution is available, IP-derived reaction deletion sets represent minimal cut sets (MCSs). Despite the additional computation of MCSs, AILP achieved significant time reduction in computing EMs by orders of magnitude. The proposed AILP algorithm not only offers a computational advantage in the EM analysis of genome-scale networks, but also improves the understanding of the linkage between EMs and MCSs. The software is implemented in Matlab, and is provided as supplementary information . hyunseob.song@pnnl.gov. Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online. Published by Oxford University Press 2017. This work is written by US Government employees and are in the public domain in the US.

  16. Connexin 43-Mediated Astroglial Metabolic Networks Contribute to the Regulation of the Sleep-Wake Cycle.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Clasadonte, Jerome; Scemes, Eliana; Wang, Zhongya; Boison, Detlev; Haydon, Philip G

    2017-09-13

    Astrocytes produce and supply metabolic substrates to neurons through gap junction-mediated astroglial networks. However, the role of astroglial metabolic networks in behavior is unclear. Here, we demonstrate that perturbation of astroglial networks impairs the sleep-wake cycle. Using a conditional Cre-Lox system in mice, we show that knockout of the gap junction subunit connexin 43 in astrocytes throughout the brain causes excessive sleepiness and fragmented wakefulness during the nocturnal active phase. This astrocyte-specific genetic manipulation silenced the wake-promoting orexin neurons located in the lateral hypothalamic area (LHA) by impairing glucose and lactate trafficking through astrocytic networks. This global wakefulness instability was mimicked with viral delivery of Cre recombinase to astrocytes in the LHA and rescued by in vivo injections of lactate. Our findings propose a novel regulatory mechanism critical for maintaining normal daily cycle of wakefulness and involving astrocyte-neuron metabolic interactions. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  17. Multiobjective flux balancing using the NISE method for metabolic network analysis.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Oh, Young-Gyun; Lee, Dong-Yup; Lee, Sang Yup; Park, Sunwon

    2009-01-01

    Flux balance analysis (FBA) is well acknowledged as an analysis tool of metabolic networks in the framework of metabolic engineering. However, FBA has a limitation for solving a multiobjective optimization problem which considers multiple conflicting objectives. In this study, we propose a novel multiobjective flux balance analysis method, which adapts the noninferior set estimation (NISE) method (Solanki et al., 1993) for multiobjective linear programming (MOLP) problems. NISE method can generate an approximation of the Pareto curve for conflicting objectives without redundant iterations of single objective optimization. Furthermore, the flux distributions at each Pareto optimal solution can be obtained for understanding the internal flux changes in the metabolic network. The functionality of this approach is shown by applying it to a genome-scale in silico model of E. coli. Multiple objectives for the poly(3-hydroxybutyrate) [P(3HB)] production are considered simultaneously, and relationships among them are identified. The Pareto curve for maximizing succinic acid production vs. maximizing biomass production is used for the in silico analysis of various combinatorial knockout strains. This proposed method accelerates the strain improvement in the metabolic engineering by reducing computation time of obtaining the Pareto curve and analysis time of flux distribution at each Pareto optimal solution. (c) 2009 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Biotechnol. Prog., 2009.

  18. A Multilevel Adaptive Reaction-splitting Simulation Method for Stochastic Reaction Networks

    KAUST Repository

    Moraes, Alvaro; Tempone, Raul; Vilanova, Pedro

    2016-01-01

    In this work, we present a novel multilevel Monte Carlo method for kinetic simulation of stochastic reaction networks characterized by having simultaneously fast and slow reaction channels. To produce efficient simulations, our method adaptively classifies the reactions channels into fast and slow channels. To this end, we first introduce a state-dependent quantity named level of activity of a reaction channel. Then, we propose a low-cost heuristic that allows us to adaptively split the set of reaction channels into two subsets characterized by either a high or a low level of activity. Based on a time-splitting technique, the increments associated with high-activity channels are simulated using the tau-leap method, while those associated with low-activity channels are simulated using an exact method. This path simulation technique is amenable for coupled path generation and a corresponding multilevel Monte Carlo algorithm. To estimate expected values of observables of the system at a prescribed final time, our method bounds the global computational error to be below a prescribed tolerance, TOL, within a given confidence level. This goal is achieved with a computational complexity of order O(TOL-2), the same as with a pathwise-exact method, but with a smaller constant. We also present a novel low-cost control variate technique based on the stochastic time change representation by Kurtz, showing its performance on a numerical example. We present two numerical examples extracted from the literature that show how the reaction-splitting method obtains substantial gains with respect to the standard stochastic simulation algorithm and the multilevel Monte Carlo approach by Anderson and Higham. © 2016 Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics.

  19. A Multilevel Adaptive Reaction-splitting Simulation Method for Stochastic Reaction Networks

    KAUST Repository

    Moraes, Alvaro

    2016-07-07

    In this work, we present a novel multilevel Monte Carlo method for kinetic simulation of stochastic reaction networks characterized by having simultaneously fast and slow reaction channels. To produce efficient simulations, our method adaptively classifies the reactions channels into fast and slow channels. To this end, we first introduce a state-dependent quantity named level of activity of a reaction channel. Then, we propose a low-cost heuristic that allows us to adaptively split the set of reaction channels into two subsets characterized by either a high or a low level of activity. Based on a time-splitting technique, the increments associated with high-activity channels are simulated using the tau-leap method, while those associated with low-activity channels are simulated using an exact method. This path simulation technique is amenable for coupled path generation and a corresponding multilevel Monte Carlo algorithm. To estimate expected values of observables of the system at a prescribed final time, our method bounds the global computational error to be below a prescribed tolerance, TOL, within a given confidence level. This goal is achieved with a computational complexity of order O(TOL-2), the same as with a pathwise-exact method, but with a smaller constant. We also present a novel low-cost control variate technique based on the stochastic time change representation by Kurtz, showing its performance on a numerical example. We present two numerical examples extracted from the literature that show how the reaction-splitting method obtains substantial gains with respect to the standard stochastic simulation algorithm and the multilevel Monte Carlo approach by Anderson and Higham. © 2016 Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics.

  20. An Integrative Bioinformatics Framework for Genome-scale Multiple Level Network Reconstruction of Rice

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Liu Lili

    2013-06-01

    Full Text Available Understanding how metabolic reactions translate the genome of an organism into its phenotype is a grand challenge in biology. Genome-wide association studies (GWAS statistically connect genotypes to phenotypes, without any recourse to known molecular interactions, whereas a molecular mechanistic description ties gene function to phenotype through gene regulatory networks (GRNs, protein-protein interactions (PPIs and molecular pathways. Integration of different regulatory information levels of an organism is expected to provide a good way for mapping genotypes to phenotypes. However, the lack of curated metabolic model of rice is blocking the exploration of genome-scale multi-level network reconstruction. Here, we have merged GRNs, PPIs and genome-scale metabolic networks (GSMNs approaches into a single framework for rice via omics’ regulatory information reconstruction and integration. Firstly, we reconstructed a genome-scale metabolic model, containing 4,462 function genes, 2,986 metabolites involved in 3,316 reactions, and compartmentalized into ten subcellular locations. Furthermore, 90,358 pairs of protein-protein interactions, 662,936 pairs of gene regulations and 1,763 microRNA-target interactions were integrated into the metabolic model. Eventually, a database was developped for systematically storing and retrieving the genome-scale multi-level network of rice. This provides a reference for understanding genotype-phenotype relationship of rice, and for analysis of its molecular regulatory network.

  1. Genome-scale reconstruction of the metabolic network in Yersinia pestis CO92

    Science.gov (United States)

    Navid, Ali; Almaas, Eivind

    2007-03-01

    The gram-negative bacterium Yersinia pestis is the causative agent of bubonic plague. Using publicly available genomic, biochemical and physiological data, we have developed a constraint-based flux balance model of metabolism in the CO92 strain (biovar Orientalis) of this organism. The metabolic reactions were appropriately compartmentalized, and the model accounts for the exchange of metabolites, as well as the import of nutrients and export of waste products. We have characterized the metabolic capabilities and phenotypes of this organism, after comparing the model predictions with available experimental observations to evaluate accuracy and completeness. We have also begun preliminary studies into how cellular metabolism affects virulence.

  2. Molecules in motion: influences of diffusion on metabolic structure and function in skeletal muscle.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kinsey, Stephen T; Locke, Bruce R; Dillaman, Richard M

    2011-01-15

    Metabolic processes are often represented as a group of metabolites that interact through enzymatic reactions, thus forming a network of linked biochemical pathways. Implicit in this view is that diffusion of metabolites to and from enzymes is very fast compared with reaction rates, and metabolic fluxes are therefore almost exclusively dictated by catalytic properties. However, diffusion may exert greater control over the rates of reactions through: (1) an increase in reaction rates; (2) an increase in diffusion distances; or (3) a decrease in the relevant diffusion coefficients. It is therefore not surprising that skeletal muscle fibers have long been the focus of reaction-diffusion analyses because they have high and variable rates of ATP turnover, long diffusion distances, and hindered metabolite diffusion due to an abundance of intracellular barriers. Examination of the diversity of skeletal muscle fiber designs found in animals provides insights into the role that diffusion plays in governing both rates of metabolic fluxes and cellular organization. Experimental measurements of metabolic fluxes, diffusion distances and diffusion coefficients, coupled with reaction-diffusion mathematical models in a range of muscle types has started to reveal some general principles guiding muscle structure and metabolic function. Foremost among these is that metabolic processes in muscles do, in fact, appear to be largely reaction controlled and are not greatly limited by diffusion. However, the influence of diffusion is apparent in patterns of fiber growth and metabolic organization that appear to result from selective pressure to maintain reaction control of metabolism in muscle.

  3. Global exponential stability and periodicity of reaction-diffusion delayed recurrent neural networks with Dirichlet boundary conditions

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Lu Junguo

    2008-01-01

    In this paper, the global exponential stability and periodicity for a class of reaction-diffusion delayed recurrent neural networks with Dirichlet boundary conditions are addressed by constructing suitable Lyapunov functionals and utilizing some inequality techniques. We first prove global exponential converge to 0 of the difference between any two solutions of the original reaction-diffusion delayed recurrent neural networks with Dirichlet boundary conditions, the existence and uniqueness of equilibrium is the direct results of this procedure. This approach is different from the usually used one where the existence, uniqueness of equilibrium and stability are proved in two separate steps. Furthermore, we prove periodicity of the reaction-diffusion delayed recurrent neural networks with Dirichlet boundary conditions. Sufficient conditions ensuring the global exponential stability and the existence of periodic oscillatory solutions for the reaction-diffusion delayed recurrent neural networks with Dirichlet boundary conditions are given. These conditions are easy to check and have important leading significance in the design and application of reaction-diffusion recurrent neural networks with delays. Finally, two numerical examples are given to show the effectiveness of the obtained results

  4. Global exponential stability of reaction-diffusion recurrent neural networks with time-varying delays

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Liang Jinling; Cao Jinde

    2003-01-01

    Employing general Halanay inequality, we analyze the global exponential stability of a class of reaction-diffusion recurrent neural networks with time-varying delays. Several new sufficient conditions are obtained to ensure existence, uniqueness and global exponential stability of the equilibrium point of delayed reaction-diffusion recurrent neural networks. The results extend and improve the earlier publications. In addition, an example is given to show the effectiveness of the obtained result

  5. Nuclear Forensics and Radiochemistry: Reaction Networks

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Rundberg, Robert S. [Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)

    2017-11-22

    In the intense neutron flux of a nuclear explosion the production of isotopes may occur through successive neutron induced reactions. The pathway to these isotopes illustrates both the complexity of the problem and the need for high quality nuclear data. The growth and decay of radioactive isotopes can follow a similarly complex network. The Bateman equation will be described and modified to apply to the transmutation of isotopes in a high flux reactor. A alternative model of growth and decay, the GD code, that can be applied to fission products will also be described.

  6. Studies of liver-specific metabolic reactions with /sup 15/N. 1. Metabolism of /sup 15/N-ammonium chloride in pigs

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Hirschberg, K; Jung, K; Faust, H; Matkowitz, R

    1987-07-01

    The /sup 15/N tracer technique was used to investigate liver-specific reactions (urea and hippurate synthesis) for studying the metabolism in the healthy and damaged pig liver. After (/sup 15/N)ammonium chloride administration the tracer distribution on non-protein compounds of serum and urine was followed. Blood samplings before and after liver passage rendered possible a direct analysis of the (/sup 15/N)ammonium metabolism. The thioacetamide-induced liver damage was used as model for an acute liver intoxication. The capacity for urea synthesis was not influenced by means of this noxious substance, but the metabolism of amino acids and hippuric acid. The considerably depressed excretion of (/sup 15/N)hippurate seems to be a suitable indicator of liver disfunction.

  7. The US nuclear reaction data network. Summary of the first meeting, March 13 ampersand 14 1996

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    1996-03-01

    The first meeting of the US Nuclear Reaction Data Network (USNRDN) was held at the Colorado School of Mines, March 13-14, 1996 chaired by F. Edward Cecil. The Agenda of the meeting is attached. The Network, its mission, products and services; related nuclear data and data networks, members, and organization are described in Attachment 1. The following progress reports from the members of the USNRDN were distributed prior to the meeting and are given as Attachment 2. (1) Measurements and Development of Analytic Techniques for Basic Nuclear Physics and Nuclear Applications; (2) Nuclear Reaction Data Activities at the National Nuclear Data Center; (3) Studies of nuclear reactions at very low energies; (4) Nuclear Reaction Data Activities, Nuclear Data Group; (5) Progress in Neutron Physics at Los Alamos - Experiments; (6) Nuclear Reaction Data Activities in Group T2; (7) Progress Report for the US Nuclear Reaction Data Network Meeting; (8) Nuclear Astrophysics Research Group (ORNL); (9) Progress Report from Ohio University; (10) Exciton Model Phenomenology; and (11) Progress Report for Coordination Meeting USNRDN

  8. Transcriptional regulation and steady-state modeling of metabolic networks

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Zelezniak, Aleksej

    Biological systems are characterized by a high degree of complexity wherein the individual components (e.g. proteins) are inter-linked in a way that leads to emergent behaviors that are difficult to decipher. Uncovering system complexity requires, at least, answers to the following three questions......: what are the components of the systems, how are the different components interconnected and how do these networks perform the functions that make the resulting system behavior? Modern analytical technologies allow us to unravel the constituents and interactions happening in a given system; however......, the third question is the ultimate challenge for systems biology. The work of this thesis systematically addresses this question in the context of metabolic networks, which are arguably the most well characterized cellular networks in terms of their constituting components and interactions among them...

  9. A FDG-PET Study of Metabolic Networks in Apolipoprotein E ε4 Allele Carriers.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Zhijun Yao

    Full Text Available Recently, some studies have applied the graph theory in brain network analysis in Alzheimer's disease (AD and Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI. However, relatively little research has specifically explored the properties of the metabolic network in apolipoprotein E (APOE ε4 allele carriers. In our study, all the subjects, including ADs, MCIs and NCs (normal controls were divided into 165 APOE ε4 carriers and 165 APOE ε4 noncarriers. To establish the metabolic network for all brain regions except the cerebellum, cerebral glucose metabolism data obtained from FDG-PET (18F-fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography were segmented into 90 areas with automated anatomical labeling (AAL template. Then, the properties of the networks were computed to explore the between-group differences. Our results suggested that both APOE ε4 carriers and noncarriers showed the small-world properties. Besides, compared with APOE ε4 noncarriers, the carriers showed a lower clustering coefficient. In addition, significant changes in 6 hub brain regions were found in between-group nodal centrality. Namely, compared with APOE ε4 noncarriers, significant decreases of the nodal centrality were found in left insula, right insula, right anterior cingulate, right paracingulate gyri, left cuneus, as well as significant increases in left paracentral lobule and left heschl gyrus in APOE ε4 carriers. Increased local short distance interregional correlations and disrupted long distance interregional correlations were found, which may support the point that the APOE ε4 carriers were more similar with AD or MCI in FDG uptake. In summary, the organization of metabolic network in APOE ε4 carriers indicated a less optimal pattern and APOE ε4 might be a risk factor for AD.

  10. Developmental changes in the metabolic network of snapdragon flowers.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Joëlle K Muhlemann

    Full Text Available Evolutionary and reproductive success of angiosperms, the most diverse group of land plants, relies on visual and olfactory cues for pollinator attraction. Previous work has focused on elucidating the developmental regulation of pathways leading to the formation of pollinator-attracting secondary metabolites such as scent compounds and flower pigments. However, to date little is known about how flowers control their entire metabolic network to achieve the highly regulated production of metabolites attracting pollinators. Integrative analysis of transcripts and metabolites in snapdragon sepals and petals over flower development performed in this study revealed a profound developmental remodeling of gene expression and metabolite profiles in petals, but not in sepals. Genes up-regulated during petal development were enriched in functions related to secondary metabolism, fatty acid catabolism, and amino acid transport, whereas down-regulated genes were enriched in processes involved in cell growth, cell wall formation, and fatty acid biosynthesis. The levels of transcripts and metabolites in pathways leading to scent formation were coordinately up-regulated during petal development, implying transcriptional induction of metabolic pathways preceding scent formation. Developmental gene expression patterns in the pathways involved in scent production were different from those of glycolysis and the pentose phosphate pathway, highlighting distinct developmental regulation of secondary metabolism and primary metabolic pathways feeding into it.

  11. Psychosocial risk factors for the metabolic syndrome

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Pedersen, Jolene Masters; Lund, Rikke; Andersen, Ingelise

    2016-01-01

    Background/Objectives: Metabolic deregulations and development of metabolic syndrome may be an important pathway underlying the relationship between stress and cardiovascular disease. We aim to estimate the effect of a comprehensive range of psychosocial factors on the risk of developing metabolic.......11) to be risk factors for developing the metabolic syndrome in women, while vital exhaustion (OR 2.09, 95% CI 0.95 to 4.59) and intake of sleep medications (OR 2.54, 95% CI 0.92 to 5.96) may play a more important role in men. Conclusions: Experiencing major life events in work and adult life and....../or dysfunctional social networks is a risk factor for metabolic syndrome in women, and stress reactions such as vital exhaustion and intake of sleep medications may play a more important role in the development of metabolic syndrome men....

  12. Chemical reaction networks as a model to describe UVC- and radiolytically-induced reactions of simple compounds.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Dondi, Daniele; Merli, Daniele; Albini, Angelo; Zeffiro, Alberto; Serpone, Nick

    2012-05-01

    When a chemical system is submitted to high energy sources (UV, ionizing radiation, plasma sparks, etc.), as is expected to be the case of prebiotic chemistry studies, a plethora of reactive intermediates could form. If oxygen is present in excess, carbon dioxide and water are the major products. More interesting is the case of reducing conditions where synthetic pathways are also possible. This article examines the theoretical modeling of such systems with random-generated chemical networks. Four types of random-generated chemical networks were considered that originated from a combination of two connection topologies (viz., Poisson and scale-free) with reversible and irreversible chemical reactions. The results were analyzed taking into account the number of the most abundant products required for reaching 50% of the total number of moles of compounds at equilibrium, as this may be related to an actual problem of complex mixture analysis. The model accounts for multi-component reaction systems with no a priori knowledge of reacting species and the intermediates involved if system components are sufficiently interconnected. The approach taken is relevant to an earlier study on reactions that may have occurred in prebiotic systems where only a few compounds were detected. A validation of the model was attained on the basis of results of UVC and radiolytic reactions of prebiotic mixtures of low molecular weight compounds likely present on the primeval Earth.

  13. A cascade reaction network mimicking the basic functional steps of acquired immune response

    Science.gov (United States)

    Han, Da; Wu, Cuichen; You, Mingxu; Zhang, Tao; Wan, Shuo; Chen, Tao; Qiu, Liping; Zheng, Zheng; Liang, Hao; Tan, Weihong

    2015-01-01

    Biological systems use complex ‘information processing cores’ composed of molecular networks to coordinate their external environment and internal states. An example of this is the acquired, or adaptive, immune system (AIS), which is composed of both humoral and cell-mediated components. Here we report the step-by-step construction of a prototype mimic of the AIS which we call Adaptive Immune Response Simulator (AIRS). DNA and enzymes are used as simple artificial analogues of the components of the AIS to create a system which responds to specific molecular stimuli in vitro. We show that this network of reactions can function in a manner which is superficially similar to the most basic responses of the vertebrate acquired immune system, including reaction sequences that mimic both humoral and cellular responses. As such, AIRS provides guidelines for the design and engineering of artificial reaction networks and molecular devices. PMID:26391084

  14. A cascade reaction network mimicking the basic functional steps of adaptive immune response.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Han, Da; Wu, Cuichen; You, Mingxu; Zhang, Tao; Wan, Shuo; Chen, Tao; Qiu, Liping; Zheng, Zheng; Liang, Hao; Tan, Weihong

    2015-10-01

    Biological systems use complex 'information-processing cores' composed of molecular networks to coordinate their external environment and internal states. An example of this is the acquired, or adaptive, immune system (AIS), which is composed of both humoral and cell-mediated components. Here we report the step-by-step construction of a prototype mimic of the AIS that we call an adaptive immune response simulator (AIRS). DNA and enzymes are used as simple artificial analogues of the components of the AIS to create a system that responds to specific molecular stimuli in vitro. We show that this network of reactions can function in a manner that is superficially similar to the most basic responses of the vertebrate AIS, including reaction sequences that mimic both humoral and cellular responses. As such, AIRS provides guidelines for the design and engineering of artificial reaction networks and molecular devices.

  15. Revealing networks from dynamics: an introduction

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Timme, Marc; Casadiego, Jose

    2014-01-01

    What can we learn from the collective dynamics of a complex network about its interaction topology? Taking the perspective from nonlinear dynamics, we briefly review recent progress on how to infer structural connectivity (direct interactions) from accessing the dynamics of the units. Potential applications range from interaction networks in physics, to chemical and metabolic reactions, protein and gene regulatory networks as well as neural circuits in biology and electric power grids or wireless sensor networks in engineering. Moreover, we briefly mention some standard ways of inferring effective or functional connectivity. (topical review)

  16. Reaction network modelling for kinetic parameters of pyrolytic reactions of CHON extractants in nuclear fuel processing waste management. Contributed Paper IT-07

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Gaikar, Vilas G.; Thaore, Vaishali

    2014-01-01

    The recovery and purification of plutonium (Pu) from uranium (U) and of U from Thorium (Th) in spent nuclear fuel reprocessing is accomplished by processes that employ organophosphorous compounds as extractants.The main objective of the present work was to develop a suitable kinetic model and to determine the kinetic parameters of the set of reactions involved in the pyrolysis of amides by fitting the experimental data in the reaction network model. The experimental data and analysis are expected to be useful in the steam pyrolysis of amide waste in fuel reprocessing in the nuclear industry. The basic approach was to understand the reaction mechanism of the steam pyrolysis of amides and then to estimate the reaction rate constants for the generation and consumption of different species by solving the model equations, allowing for the determination of important species in the reaction network

  17. Characterizing steady states of genome-scale metabolic networks in continuous cell cultures.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Jorge Fernandez-de-Cossio-Diaz

    2017-11-01

    Full Text Available In the continuous mode of cell culture, a constant flow carrying fresh media replaces culture fluid, cells, nutrients and secreted metabolites. Here we present a model for continuous cell culture coupling intra-cellular metabolism to extracellular variables describing the state of the bioreactor, taking into account the growth capacity of the cell and the impact of toxic byproduct accumulation. We provide a method to determine the steady states of this system that is tractable for metabolic networks of arbitrary complexity. We demonstrate our approach in a toy model first, and then in a genome-scale metabolic network of the Chinese hamster ovary cell line, obtaining results that are in qualitative agreement with experimental observations. We derive a number of consequences from the model that are independent of parameter values. The ratio between cell density and dilution rate is an ideal control parameter to fix a steady state with desired metabolic properties. This conclusion is robust even in the presence of multi-stability, which is explained in our model by a negative feedback loop due to toxic byproduct accumulation. A complex landscape of steady states emerges from our simulations, including multiple metabolic switches, which also explain why cell-line and media benchmarks carried out in batch culture cannot be extrapolated to perfusion. On the other hand, we predict invariance laws between continuous cell cultures with different parameters. A practical consequence is that the chemostat is an ideal experimental model for large-scale high-density perfusion cultures, where the complex landscape of metabolic transitions is faithfully reproduced.

  18. Simulation and Statistical Inference of Stochastic Reaction Networks with Applications to Epidemic Models

    KAUST Repository

    Moraes, Alvaro

    2015-01-01

    Networks (SRNs), that are intended to describe the time evolution of interacting particle systems where one particle interacts with the others through a finite set of reaction channels. SRNs have been mainly developed to model biochemical reactions

  19. In silico strain optimization by adding reactions to metabolic models.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Correia, Sara; Rocha, Miguel

    2012-07-24

    Nowadays, the concerns about the environment and the needs to increase the productivity at low costs, demand for the search of new ways to produce compounds with industrial interest. Based on the increasing knowledge of biological processes, through genome sequencing projects, and high-throughput experimental techniques as well as the available computational tools, the use of microorganisms has been considered as an approach to produce desirable compounds. However, this usually requires to manipulate these organisms by genetic engineering and/ or changing the enviromental conditions to make the production of these compounds possible. In many cases, it is necessary to enrich the genetic material of those microbes with hereologous pathways from other species and consequently adding the potential to produce novel compounds. This paper introduces a new plug-in for the OptFlux Metabolic Engineering platform, aimed at finding suitable sets of reactions to add to the genomes of selected microbes (wild type strain), as well as finding complementary sets of deletions, so that the mutant becomes able to overproduce compounds with industrial interest, while preserving their viability. The necessity of adding reactions to the metabolic model arises from existing gaps in the original model or motivated by the productions of new compounds by the organism. The optimization methods used are metaheuristics such as Evolutionary Algorithms and Simulated Annealing. The usefulness of this plug-in is demonstrated by a case study, regarding the production of vanillin by the bacterium E. coli.

  20. Metabolic control analysis of biochemical pathways based on a thermokinetic description of reaction rates

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Nielsen, Jens Bredal

    1997-01-01

    Metabolic control analysis is a powerful technique for the evaluation of flux control within biochemical pathways. Its foundation is the elasticity coefficients and the flux control coefficients (FCCs). On the basis of a thermokinetic description of reaction rates it is here shown...... that the elasticity coefficients can be calculated directly from the pool levels of metabolites at steady state. The only requirement is that one thermodynamic parameter be known, namely the reaction affinity at the intercept of the tangent in the inflection point of the curve of reaction rate against reaction...... of the thermokinetic description of reaction rates to include the influence of effecters. Here the reaction rate is written as a linear function of the logarithm of the metabolite concentrations. With this type of rate function it is shown that the approach of Delgado and Liao [Biochem. J. (1992) 282, 919-927] can...

  1. Parallel replica dynamics method for bistable stochastic reaction networks: Simulation and sensitivity analysis

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wang, Ting; Plecháč, Petr

    2017-12-01

    Stochastic reaction networks that exhibit bistable behavior are common in systems biology, materials science, and catalysis. Sampling of stationary distributions is crucial for understanding and characterizing the long-time dynamics of bistable stochastic dynamical systems. However, simulations are often hindered by the insufficient sampling of rare transitions between the two metastable regions. In this paper, we apply the parallel replica method for a continuous time Markov chain in order to improve sampling of the stationary distribution in bistable stochastic reaction networks. The proposed method uses parallel computing to accelerate the sampling of rare transitions. Furthermore, it can be combined with the path-space information bounds for parametric sensitivity analysis. With the proposed methodology, we study three bistable biological networks: the Schlögl model, the genetic switch network, and the enzymatic futile cycle network. We demonstrate the algorithmic speedup achieved in these numerical benchmarks. More significant acceleration is expected when multi-core or graphics processing unit computer architectures and programming tools such as CUDA are employed.

  2. Parallel replica dynamics method for bistable stochastic reaction networks: Simulation and sensitivity analysis.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wang, Ting; Plecháč, Petr

    2017-12-21

    Stochastic reaction networks that exhibit bistable behavior are common in systems biology, materials science, and catalysis. Sampling of stationary distributions is crucial for understanding and characterizing the long-time dynamics of bistable stochastic dynamical systems. However, simulations are often hindered by the insufficient sampling of rare transitions between the two metastable regions. In this paper, we apply the parallel replica method for a continuous time Markov chain in order to improve sampling of the stationary distribution in bistable stochastic reaction networks. The proposed method uses parallel computing to accelerate the sampling of rare transitions. Furthermore, it can be combined with the path-space information bounds for parametric sensitivity analysis. With the proposed methodology, we study three bistable biological networks: the Schlögl model, the genetic switch network, and the enzymatic futile cycle network. We demonstrate the algorithmic speedup achieved in these numerical benchmarks. More significant acceleration is expected when multi-core or graphics processing unit computer architectures and programming tools such as CUDA are employed.

  3. Metabolic Control of Redox and Redox Control of Metabolism in Plants

    Science.gov (United States)

    Fernie, Alisdair R.

    2014-01-01

    Abstract Significance: Reduction-oxidation (Redox) status operates as a major integrator of subcellular and extracellular metabolism and is simultaneously itself regulated by metabolic processes. Redox status not only dominates cellular metabolism due to the prominence of NAD(H) and NADP(H) couples in myriad metabolic reactions but also acts as an effective signal that informs the cell of the prevailing environmental conditions. After relay of this information, the cell is able to appropriately respond via a range of mechanisms, including directly affecting cellular functioning and reprogramming nuclear gene expression. Recent Advances: The facile accession of Arabidopsis knockout mutants alongside the adoption of broad-scale post-genomic approaches, which are able to provide transcriptomic-, proteomic-, and metabolomic-level information alongside traditional biochemical and emerging cell biological techniques, has dramatically advanced our understanding of redox status control. This review summarizes redox status control of metabolism and the metabolic control of redox status at both cellular and subcellular levels. Critical Issues: It is becoming apparent that plastid, mitochondria, and peroxisome functions influence a wide range of processes outside of the organelles themselves. While knowledge of the network of metabolic pathways and their intraorganellar redox status regulation has increased in the last years, little is known about the interorganellar redox signals coordinating these networks. A current challenge is, therefore, synthesizing our knowledge and planning experiments that tackle redox status regulation at both inter- and intracellular levels. Future Directions: Emerging tools are enabling ever-increasing spatiotemporal resolution of metabolism and imaging of redox status components. Broader application of these tools will likely greatly enhance our understanding of the interplay of redox status and metabolism as well as elucidating and

  4. Global exponential stability of fuzzy cellular neural networks with delays and reaction-diffusion terms

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Wang Jian; Lu Junguo

    2008-01-01

    In this paper, we study the global exponential stability of fuzzy cellular neural networks with delays and reaction-diffusion terms. By constructing a suitable Lyapunov functional and utilizing some inequality techniques, we obtain a sufficient condition for the uniqueness and global exponential stability of the equilibrium solution for a class of fuzzy cellular neural networks with delays and reaction-diffusion terms. The result imposes constraint conditions on the network parameters independently of the delay parameter. The result is also easy to check and plays an important role in the design and application of globally exponentially stable fuzzy neural circuits

  5. A Novel Methodology to Estimate Metabolic Flux Distributions in Constraint-Based Models

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Francesco Alessandro Massucci

    2013-09-01

    Full Text Available Quite generally, constraint-based metabolic flux analysis describes the space of viable flux configurations for a metabolic network as a high-dimensional polytope defined by the linear constraints that enforce the balancing of production and consumption fluxes for each chemical species in the system. In some cases, the complexity of the solution space can be reduced by performing an additional optimization, while in other cases, knowing the range of variability of fluxes over the polytope provides a sufficient characterization of the allowed configurations. There are cases, however, in which the thorough information encoded in the individual distributions of viable fluxes over the polytope is required. Obtaining such distributions is known to be a highly challenging computational task when the dimensionality of the polytope is sufficiently large, and the problem of developing cost-effective ad hoc algorithms has recently seen a major surge of interest. Here, we propose a method that allows us to perform the required computation heuristically in a time scaling linearly with the number of reactions in the network, overcoming some limitations of similar techniques employed in recent years. As a case study, we apply it to the analysis of the human red blood cell metabolic network, whose solution space can be sampled by different exact techniques, like Hit-and-Run Monte Carlo (scaling roughly like the third power of the system size. Remarkably accurate estimates for the true distributions of viable reaction fluxes are obtained, suggesting that, although further improvements are desirable, our method enhances our ability to analyze the space of allowed configurations for large biochemical reaction networks.

  6. Development of an internet based system for modeling biotin metabolism using Bayesian networks.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zhou, Jinglei; Wang, Dong; Schlegel, Vicki; Zempleni, Janos

    2011-11-01

    Biotin is an essential water-soluble vitamin crucial for maintaining normal body functions. The importance of biotin for human health has been under-appreciated but there is plenty of opportunity for future research with great importance for human health. Currently, carrying out predictions of biotin metabolism involves tedious manual manipulations. In this paper, we report the development of BiotinNet, an internet based program that uses Bayesian networks to integrate published data on various aspects of biotin metabolism. Users can provide a combination of values on the levels of biotin related metabolites to obtain the predictions on other metabolites that are not specified. As an inherent feature of Bayesian networks, the uncertainty of the prediction is also quantified and reported to the user. This program enables convenient in silico experiments regarding biotin metabolism, which can help researchers design future experiments while new data can be continuously incorporated. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

  7. The origin of modern metabolic networks inferred from phylogenomic analysis of protein architecture.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Caetano-Anollés, Gustavo; Kim, Hee Shin; Mittenthal, Jay E

    2007-05-29

    Metabolism represents a complex collection of enzymatic reactions and transport processes that convert metabolites into molecules capable of supporting cellular life. Here we explore the origins and evolution of modern metabolism. Using phylogenomic information linked to the structure of metabolic enzymes, we sort out recruitment processes and discover that most enzymatic activities were associated with the nine most ancient and widely distributed protein fold architectures. An analysis of newly discovered functions showed enzymatic diversification occurred early, during the onset of the modern protein world. Most importantly, phylogenetic reconstruction exercises and other evidence suggest strongly that metabolism originated in enzymes with the P-loop hydrolase fold in nucleotide metabolism, probably in pathways linked to the purine metabolic subnetwork. Consequently, the first enzymatic takeover of an ancient biochemistry or prebiotic chemistry was related to the synthesis of nucleotides for the RNA world.

  8. Small-worldness and gender differences of large scale brain metabolic covariance networks in young adults: a FDG PET study of 400 subjects.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hu, Yuxiao; Xu, Qiang; Shen, Junkang; Li, Kai; Zhu, Hong; Zhang, Zhiqiang; Lu, Guangming

    2015-02-01

    Many studies have demonstrated the small-worldness of the human brain, and have revealed a sexual dimorphism in brain network properties. However, little is known about the gender effects on the topological organization of the brain metabolic covariance networks. To investigate the small-worldness and the gender differences in the topological architectures of human brain metabolic networks. FDG-PET data of 400 healthy right-handed subjects (200 women and 200 age-matched men) were involved in the present study. Metabolic networks of each gender were constructed by calculating the covariance of regional cerebral glucose metabolism (rCMglc) across subjects on the basis of AAL parcellation. Gender differences of network and nodal properties were investigated by using the graph theoretical approaches. Moreover, the gender-related difference of rCMglc in each brain region was tested for investigating the relationships between the hub regions and the brain regions showing significant gender-related differences in rCMglc. We found prominent small-world properties in the domain of metabolic networks in each gender. No significant gender difference in the global characteristics was found. Gender differences of nodal characteristic were observed in a few brain regions. We also found bilateral and lateralized distributions of network hubs in the females and males. Furthermore, we first reported that some hubs of a gender located in the brain regions showing weaker rCMglc in this gender than the other gender. The present study demonstrated that small-worldness was existed in metabolic networks, and revealed gender differences of organizational patterns in metabolic network. These results maybe provided insights into the understanding of the metabolic substrates underlying individual differences in cognition and behaviors. © The Foundation Acta Radiologica 2014 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav.

  9. Event-triggered synchronization for reaction-diffusion complex networks via random sampling

    Science.gov (United States)

    Dong, Tao; Wang, Aijuan; Zhu, Huiyun; Liao, Xiaofeng

    2018-04-01

    In this paper, the synchronization problem of the reaction-diffusion complex networks (RDCNs) with Dirichlet boundary conditions is considered, where the data is sampled randomly. An event-triggered controller based on the sampled data is proposed, which can reduce the number of controller and the communication load. Under this strategy, the synchronization problem of the diffusion complex network is equivalently converted to the stability of a of reaction-diffusion complex dynamical systems with time delay. By using the matrix inequality technique and Lyapunov method, the synchronization conditions of the RDCNs are derived, which are dependent on the diffusion term. Moreover, it is found the proposed control strategy can get rid of the Zeno behavior naturally. Finally, a numerical example is given to verify the obtained results.

  10. Differential RNA-seq, Multi-Network Analysis and Metabolic Regulation Analysis of Kluyveromyces marxianus Reveals a Compartmentalised Response to Xylose.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Du Toit W P Schabort

    Full Text Available We investigated the transcriptomic response of a new strain of the yeast Kluyveromyces marxianus, in glucose and xylose media using RNA-seq. The data were explored in a number of innovative ways using a variety of networks types, pathway maps, enrichment statistics, reporter metabolites and a flux simulation model, revealing different aspects of the genome-scale response in an integrative systems biology manner. The importance of the subcellular localisation in the transcriptomic response is emphasised here, revealing new insights. As was previously reported by others using a rich medium, we show that peroxisomal fatty acid catabolism was dramatically up-regulated in a defined xylose mineral medium without fatty acids, along with mechanisms to activate fatty acids and transfer products of β-oxidation to the mitochondria. Notably, we observed a strong up-regulation of the 2-methylcitrate pathway, supporting capacity for odd-chain fatty acid catabolism. Next we asked which pathways would respond to the additional requirement for NADPH for xylose utilisation, and rationalised the unexpected results using simulations with Flux Balance Analysis. On a fundamental level, we investigated the contribution of the hierarchical and metabolic regulation levels to the regulation of metabolic fluxes. Metabolic regulation analysis suggested that genetic level regulation plays a major role in regulating metabolic fluxes in adaptation to xylose, even for the high capacity reactions, which is unexpected. In addition, isozyme switching may play an important role in re-routing of metabolic fluxes in subcellular compartments in K. marxianus.

  11. Switching dynamics in reaction networks induced by molecular discreteness

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Togashi, Yuichi; Kaneko, Kunihiko

    2007-01-01

    To study the fluctuations and dynamics in chemical reaction processes, stochastic differential equations based on the rate equation involving chemical concentrations are often adopted. When the number of molecules is very small, however, the discreteness in the number of molecules cannot be neglected since the number of molecules must be an integer. This discreteness can be important in biochemical reactions, where the total number of molecules is not significantly larger than the number of chemical species. To elucidate the effects of such discreteness, we study autocatalytic reaction systems comprising several chemical species through stochastic particle simulations. The generation of novel states is observed; it is caused by the extinction of some molecular species due to the discreteness in their number. We demonstrate that the reaction dynamics are switched by a single molecule, which leads to the reconstruction of the acting network structure. We also show the strong dependence of the chemical concentrations on the system size, which is caused by transitions to discreteness-induced novel states

  12. Adaptive exponential synchronization of delayed neural networks with reaction-diffusion terms

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Sheng Li; Yang Huizhong; Lou Xuyang

    2009-01-01

    This paper presents an exponential synchronization scheme for a class of neural networks with time-varying and distributed delays and reaction-diffusion terms. An adaptive synchronization controller is derived to achieve the exponential synchronization of the drive-response structure of neural networks by using the Lyapunov stability theory. At the same time, the update laws of parameters are proposed to guarantee the synchronization of delayed neural networks with all parameters unknown. It is shown that the approaches developed here extend and improve the ideas presented in recent literatures.

  13. Cerebral energy metabolism and the brain's functional network architecture: an integrative review.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lord, Louis-David; Expert, Paul; Huckins, Jeremy F; Turkheimer, Federico E

    2013-09-01

    Recent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies have emphasized the contributions of synchronized activity in distributed brain networks to cognitive processes in both health and disease. The brain's 'functional connectivity' is typically estimated from correlations in the activity time series of anatomically remote areas, and postulated to reflect information flow between neuronal populations. Although the topological properties of functional brain networks have been studied extensively, considerably less is known regarding the neurophysiological and biochemical factors underlying the temporal coordination of large neuronal ensembles. In this review, we highlight the critical contributions of high-frequency electrical oscillations in the γ-band (30 to 100 Hz) to the emergence of functional brain networks. After describing the neurobiological substrates of γ-band dynamics, we specifically discuss the elevated energy requirements of high-frequency neural oscillations, which represent a mechanistic link between the functional connectivity of brain regions and their respective metabolic demands. Experimental evidence is presented for the high oxygen and glucose consumption, and strong mitochondrial performance required to support rhythmic cortical activity in the γ-band. Finally, the implications of mitochondrial impairments and deficits in glucose metabolism for cognition and behavior are discussed in the context of neuropsychiatric and neurodegenerative syndromes characterized by large-scale changes in the organization of functional brain networks.

  14. From the selfish gene to selfish metabolism: revisiting the central dogma.

    Science.gov (United States)

    de Lorenzo, Víctor

    2014-03-01

    The standard representation of the Central Dogma (CD) of Molecular Biology conspicuously ignores metabolism. However, both the metabolites and the biochemical fluxes behind any biological phenomenon are encrypted in the DNA sequence. Metabolism constrains and even changes the information flow when the DNA-encoded instructions conflict with the homeostasis of the biochemical network. Inspection of adaptive virulence programs and emergence of xenobiotic-biodegradation pathways in environmental bacteria suggest that their main evolutionary drive is the expansion of their metabolic networks towards new chemical landscapes rather than perpetuation and spreading of their DNA sequences. Faulty enzymatic reactions on suboptimal substrates often produce reactive oxygen species (ROS), a process that fosters DNA diversification and ultimately couples catabolism of the new chemicals to growth. All this calls for a revision of the CD in which metabolism (rather than DNA) has the leading role. © 2014 WILEY Periodicals, Inc.

  15. Genome-scale modeling using flux ratio constraints to enable metabolic engineering of clostridial metabolism in silico.

    Science.gov (United States)

    McAnulty, Michael J; Yen, Jiun Y; Freedman, Benjamin G; Senger, Ryan S

    2012-05-14

    Genome-scale metabolic networks and flux models are an effective platform for linking an organism genotype to its phenotype. However, few modeling approaches offer predictive capabilities to evaluate potential metabolic engineering strategies in silico. A new method called "flux balance analysis with flux ratios (FBrAtio)" was developed in this research and applied to a new genome-scale model of Clostridium acetobutylicum ATCC 824 (iCAC490) that contains 707 metabolites and 794 reactions. FBrAtio was used to model wild-type metabolism and metabolically engineered strains of C. acetobutylicum where only flux ratio constraints and thermodynamic reversibility of reactions were required. The FBrAtio approach allowed solutions to be found through standard linear programming. Five flux ratio constraints were required to achieve a qualitative picture of wild-type metabolism for C. acetobutylicum for the production of: (i) acetate, (ii) lactate, (iii) butyrate, (iv) acetone, (v) butanol, (vi) ethanol, (vii) CO2 and (viii) H2. Results of this simulation study coincide with published experimental results and show the knockdown of the acetoacetyl-CoA transferase increases butanol to acetone selectivity, while the simultaneous over-expression of the aldehyde/alcohol dehydrogenase greatly increases ethanol production. FBrAtio is a promising new method for constraining genome-scale models using internal flux ratios. The method was effective for modeling wild-type and engineered strains of C. acetobutylicum.

  16. Simultaneous Parameters Identifiability and Estimation of an E. coli Metabolic Network Model

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Kese Pontes Freitas Alberton

    2015-01-01

    Full Text Available This work proposes a procedure for simultaneous parameters identifiability and estimation in metabolic networks in order to overcome difficulties associated with lack of experimental data and large number of parameters, a common scenario in the modeling of such systems. As case study, the complex real problem of parameters identifiability of the Escherichia coli K-12 W3110 dynamic model was investigated, composed by 18 differential ordinary equations and 35 kinetic rates, containing 125 parameters. With the procedure, model fit was improved for most of the measured metabolites, achieving 58 parameters estimated, including 5 unknown initial conditions. The results indicate that simultaneous parameters identifiability and estimation approach in metabolic networks is appealing, since model fit to the most of measured metabolites was possible even when important measures of intracellular metabolites and good initial estimates of parameters are not available.

  17. International Network of Nuclear Reaction Data Centres

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Otsuka, Naohiko; Dunaeva, Svetlana

    2010-11-01

    The activities of fourteen nuclear data centres are summarized, and their cooperation under the auspices of the International Atomic Energy Agency is described. Each of the centres provides coverage for different geographical zones and/or specific types of nuclear data, thus together providing a complete service for users worldwide. The International Network of Nuclear Reaction Data Centres (NRDC) was established with the objective of providing nuclear physics databases that are required for nuclear technology (encompassing energy and non-energy applications) by coordinating the collection, compilation and dissemination of nuclear data on an international scale. (author)

  18. HSimulator: Hybrid Stochastic/Deterministic Simulation of Biochemical Reaction Networks

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Luca Marchetti

    2017-01-01

    Full Text Available HSimulator is a multithread simulator for mass-action biochemical reaction systems placed in a well-mixed environment. HSimulator provides optimized implementation of a set of widespread state-of-the-art stochastic, deterministic, and hybrid simulation strategies including the first publicly available implementation of the Hybrid Rejection-based Stochastic Simulation Algorithm (HRSSA. HRSSA, the fastest hybrid algorithm to date, allows for an efficient simulation of the models while ensuring the exact simulation of a subset of the reaction network modeling slow reactions. Benchmarks show that HSimulator is often considerably faster than the other considered simulators. The software, running on Java v6.0 or higher, offers a simulation GUI for modeling and visually exploring biological processes and a Javadoc-documented Java library to support the development of custom applications. HSimulator is released under the COSBI Shared Source license agreement (COSBI-SSLA.

  19. Variable elimination in chemical reaction networks with mass-action kinetics

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Feliu, Elisenda; Wiuf, C.

    2012-01-01

    We consider chemical reaction networks taken with mass-action kinetics. The steady states of such a system are solutions to a system of polynomial equations. Even for small systems the task of finding the solutions is daunting. We develop an algebraic framework and procedure for linear elimination...

  20. Molecular Networking As a Drug Discovery, Drug Metabolism, and Precision Medicine Strategy.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Quinn, Robert A; Nothias, Louis-Felix; Vining, Oliver; Meehan, Michael; Esquenazi, Eduardo; Dorrestein, Pieter C

    2017-02-01

    Molecular networking is a tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) data organizational approach that has been recently introduced in the drug discovery, metabolomics, and medical fields. The chemistry of molecules dictates how they will be fragmented by MS/MS in the gas phase and, therefore, two related molecules are likely to display similar fragment ion spectra. Molecular networking organizes the MS/MS data as a relational spectral network thereby mapping the chemistry that was detected in an MS/MS-based metabolomics experiment. Although the wider utility of molecular networking is just beginning to be recognized, in this review we highlight the principles behind molecular networking and its use for the discovery of therapeutic leads, monitoring drug metabolism, clinical diagnostics, and emerging applications in precision medicine. Copyright © 2016. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

  1. XenoSite: accurately predicting CYP-mediated sites of metabolism with neural networks.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zaretzki, Jed; Matlock, Matthew; Swamidass, S Joshua

    2013-12-23

    Understanding how xenobiotic molecules are metabolized is important because it influences the safety, efficacy, and dose of medicines and how they can be modified to improve these properties. The cytochrome P450s (CYPs) are proteins responsible for metabolizing 90% of drugs on the market, and many computational methods can predict which atomic sites of a molecule--sites of metabolism (SOMs)--are modified during CYP-mediated metabolism. This study improves on prior methods of predicting CYP-mediated SOMs by using new descriptors and machine learning based on neural networks. The new method, XenoSite, is faster to train and more accurate by as much as 4% or 5% for some isozymes. Furthermore, some "incorrect" predictions made by XenoSite were subsequently validated as correct predictions by revaluation of the source literature. Moreover, XenoSite output is interpretable as a probability, which reflects both the confidence of the model that a particular atom is metabolized and the statistical likelihood that its prediction for that atom is correct.

  2. Comparative genomic reconstruction of transcriptional networks controlling central metabolism in the Shewanella genus

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Kovaleva Galina

    2011-06-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background Genome-scale prediction of gene regulation and reconstruction of transcriptional regulatory networks in bacteria is one of the critical tasks of modern genomics. The Shewanella genus is comprised of metabolically versatile gamma-proteobacteria, whose lifestyles and natural environments are substantially different from Escherichia coli and other model bacterial species. The comparative genomics approaches and computational identification of regulatory sites are useful for the in silico reconstruction of transcriptional regulatory networks in bacteria. Results To explore conservation and variations in the Shewanella transcriptional networks we analyzed the repertoire of transcription factors and performed genomics-based reconstruction and comparative analysis of regulons in 16 Shewanella genomes. The inferred regulatory network includes 82 transcription factors and their DNA binding sites, 8 riboswitches and 6 translational attenuators. Forty five regulons were newly inferred from the genome context analysis, whereas others were propagated from previously characterized regulons in the Enterobacteria and Pseudomonas spp.. Multiple variations in regulatory strategies between the Shewanella spp. and E. coli include regulon contraction and expansion (as in the case of PdhR, HexR, FadR, numerous cases of recruiting non-orthologous regulators to control equivalent pathways (e.g. PsrA for fatty acid degradation and, conversely, orthologous regulators to control distinct pathways (e.g. TyrR, ArgR, Crp. Conclusions We tentatively defined the first reference collection of ~100 transcriptional regulons in 16 Shewanella genomes. The resulting regulatory network contains ~600 regulated genes per genome that are mostly involved in metabolism of carbohydrates, amino acids, fatty acids, vitamins, metals, and stress responses. Several reconstructed regulons including NagR for N-acetylglucosamine catabolism were experimentally validated in S

  3. Impact of Fungicide Residues on Polymerase Chain Reaction and on Yeast Metabolism

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Gildo Almeida da Silva

    Full Text Available ABSTRACT The indiscriminate use of pesticides on grape crops is harmful for consumers´ healthin “in natura” consumption and in the ingestion of wine and grape juice. During winemaking, a rapid and efficient fermentation stage is critical to avoid proliferation of contaminating microorganisms and to guarantee the product´s quality. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR has the advantage of detecting these contaminants in the early stages of fermentation. However,this enzymatic reaction may also be susceptible to specific problems, reducing its efficiency. Agricultural practices, such as fungicide treatments, may be a source of PCR inhibiting factors and may also interfere in the normal course of fermentation.The action of the pesticides captan and folpet on PCR and on yeast metabolism was evaluated, once these phthalimide compounds are widely employed in Brazilian vineyards. DNA amplification was only observed at 75 and 37.5 µg/mL of captan concentrations, whereas with folpet, amplification was observed only in the two lowest concentrations tested (42.2 and 21.1µg/mL.Besides the strong inhibition on Taq polymerase activity, phthalimides also inhibited yeast metabolism at all concentrations analyzed.Grape must containing captan and folpet residues could not be transformed into wine due to stuck fermentation caused by the inhibition of yeast metabolism. Non-compliance with the waiting period for phthalimide fungicides may result in financial liabilities to the viticulture sector.The use of yeasts with high fungicide sensitivity should be selected for must fermentation as a strategy for sustainable wine production and to assure that products comply with health and food safety standards.

  4. OpenFLUX: efficient modelling software for 13C-based metabolic flux analysis

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Nielsen Lars K

    2009-05-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background The quantitative analysis of metabolic fluxes, i.e., in vivo activities of intracellular enzymes and pathways, provides key information on biological systems in systems biology and metabolic engineering. It is based on a comprehensive approach combining (i tracer cultivation on 13C substrates, (ii 13C labelling analysis by mass spectrometry and (iii mathematical modelling for experimental design, data processing, flux calculation and statistics. Whereas the cultivation and the analytical part is fairly advanced, a lack of appropriate modelling software solutions for all modelling aspects in flux studies is limiting the application of metabolic flux analysis. Results We have developed OpenFLUX as a user friendly, yet flexible software application for small and large scale 13C metabolic flux analysis. The application is based on the new Elementary Metabolite Unit (EMU framework, significantly enhancing computation speed for flux calculation. From simple notation of metabolic reaction networks defined in a spreadsheet, the OpenFLUX parser automatically generates MATLAB-readable metabolite and isotopomer balances, thus strongly facilitating model creation. The model can be used to perform experimental design, parameter estimation and sensitivity analysis either using the built-in gradient-based search or Monte Carlo algorithms or in user-defined algorithms. Exemplified for a microbial flux study with 71 reactions, 8 free flux parameters and mass isotopomer distribution of 10 metabolites, OpenFLUX allowed to automatically compile the EMU-based model from an Excel file containing metabolic reactions and carbon transfer mechanisms, showing it's user-friendliness. It reliably reproduced the published data and optimum flux distributions for the network under study were found quickly ( Conclusion We have developed a fast, accurate application to perform steady-state 13C metabolic flux analysis. OpenFLUX will strongly facilitate and

  5. Integrated in silico Analyses of Regulatory and Metabolic Networks of Synechococcus sp. PCC 7002 Reveal Relationships between Gene Centrality and Essentiality

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Hyun-Seob Song

    2015-03-01

    Full Text Available Cyanobacteria dynamically relay environmental inputs to intracellular adaptations through a coordinated adjustment of photosynthetic efficiency and carbon processing rates. The output of such adaptations is reflected through changes in transcriptional patterns and metabolic flux distributions that ultimately define growth strategy. To address interrelationships between metabolism and regulation, we performed integrative analyses of metabolic and gene co-expression networks in a model cyanobacterium, Synechococcus sp. PCC 7002. Centrality analyses using the gene co-expression network identified a set of key genes, which were defined here as “topologically important.” Parallel in silico gene knock-out simulations, using the genome-scale metabolic network, classified what we termed as “functionally important” genes, deletion of which affected growth or metabolism. A strong positive correlation was observed between topologically and functionally important genes. Functionally important genes exhibited variable levels of topological centrality; however, the majority of topologically central genes were found to be functionally essential for growth. Subsequent functional enrichment analysis revealed that both functionally and topologically important genes in Synechococcus sp. PCC 7002 are predominantly associated with translation and energy metabolism, two cellular processes critical for growth. This research demonstrates how synergistic network-level analyses can be used for reconciliation of metabolic and gene expression data to uncover fundamental biological principles.

  6. A novel strategy involved in [corrected] anti-oxidative defense: the conversion of NADH into NADPH by a metabolic network.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Ranji Singh

    Full Text Available The reduced nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate (NADPH is pivotal to the cellular anti-oxidative defence strategies in most organisms. Although its production mediated by different enzyme systems has been relatively well-studied, metabolic networks dedicated to the biogenesis of NADPH have not been fully characterized. In this report, a metabolic pathway that promotes the conversion of reduced nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NADH, a pro-oxidant into NADPH has been uncovered in Pseudomonas fluorescens exposed to oxidative stress. Enzymes such as pyruvate carboxylase (PC, malic enzyme (ME, malate dehydrogenase (MDH, malate synthase (MS, and isocitrate lyase (ICL that are involved in disparate metabolic modules, converged to create a metabolic network aimed at the transformation of NADH into NADPH. The downregulation of phosphoenol carboxykinase (PEPCK and the upregulation of pyruvate kinase (PK ensured that this metabolic cycle fixed NADH into NADPH to combat the oxidative stress triggered by the menadione insult. This is the first demonstration of a metabolic network invoked to generate NADPH from NADH, a process that may be very effective in combating oxidative stress as the increase of an anti-oxidant is coupled to the decrease of a pro-oxidant.

  7. Differential network analysis reveals evolutionary complexity in secondary metabolism of Rauvolfia serpentina over Catharanthus roseus

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Shivalika Pathania

    2016-08-01

    Full Text Available Comparative co-expression analysis of multiple species using high-throughput data is an integrative approach to determine the uniformity as well as diversification in biological processes. Rauvolfia serpentina and Catharanthus roseus, both members of Apocyanacae family, are reported to have remedial properties against multiple diseases. Despite of sharing upstream of terpenoid indole alkaloid pathway, there is significant diversity in tissue-specific synthesis and accumulation of specialized metabolites in these plants. This led us to implement comparative co-expression network analysis to investigate the modules and genes responsible for differential tissue-specific expression as well as species-specific synthesis of metabolites. Towards these goals differential network analysis was implemented to identify candidate genes responsible for diversification of metabolites profile. Three genes were identified with significant difference in connectivity leading to differential regulatory behavior between these plants. These mechanisms may be responsible for diversification of secondary metabolism, and thereby for species-specific metabolite synthesis. The network robustness of R. serpentina, determined based on topological properties, was also complemented by comparison of gene-metabolite networks of both plants, and may have evolved to have complex metabolic mechanisms as compared to C. roseus under the influence of various stimuli. This study reveals evolution of complexity in secondary metabolism of Rauvolfia serpentina, and key genes that contribute towards diversification of specific metabolites.

  8. Differential Network Analysis Reveals Evolutionary Complexity in Secondary Metabolism of Rauvolfia serpentina over Catharanthus roseus.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Pathania, Shivalika; Bagler, Ganesh; Ahuja, Paramvir S

    2016-01-01

    Comparative co-expression analysis of multiple species using high-throughput data is an integrative approach to determine the uniformity as well as diversification in biological processes. Rauvolfia serpentina and Catharanthus roseus, both members of Apocyanacae family, are reported to have remedial properties against multiple diseases. Despite of sharing upstream of terpenoid indole alkaloid pathway, there is significant diversity in tissue-specific synthesis and accumulation of specialized metabolites in these plants. This led us to implement comparative co-expression network analysis to investigate the modules and genes responsible for differential tissue-specific expression as well as species-specific synthesis of metabolites. Toward these goals differential network analysis was implemented to identify candidate genes responsible for diversification of metabolites profile. Three genes were identified with significant difference in connectivity leading to differential regulatory behavior between these plants. These genes may be responsible for diversification of secondary metabolism, and thereby for species-specific metabolite synthesis. The network robustness of R. serpentina, determined based on topological properties, was also complemented by comparison of gene-metabolite networks of both plants, and may have evolved to have complex metabolic mechanisms as compared to C. roseus under the influence of various stimuli. This study reveals evolution of complexity in secondary metabolism of R. serpentina, and key genes that contribute toward diversification of specific metabolites.

  9. [Supposed role of "metabolic memory" in formation of response reaction to stress-factors in young and adult organisms].

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bozhkov, A I; Dlubovskaia, V L; Dmitriev, Iu V; Meshaĭkina, N I; Maleev, V A; Klimova, E M

    2009-01-01

    The influence of the combined long-lasted influences of sulfur sulfate and diet restriction in young (3 month age) and adult (21 month age) Vistar rats on activity of glucose-6-phospatase, alaninaminotranspherase (ALT), aspartataminotranspherase (AST), and on phosphorilating activity of liver mitochondria was studied to investigate the role of metabolic memory on the peculiarities of response reaction. The young animals not differed from adult ones in the possibility of inducing activity of glucose-6-phospatase, ALT, and on phosphorilating activity after the influence of sulfur sulfate and diet restriction. The age-related differences in glucose-6-phospatase and transpherases and phosphorilating activity existing in control disappeared after the long-lasted action of sulfur sulfate and diet restriction. The answer reaction in enzyme activity to stress factors applied many times depends upon the metabolic memory formed in the process of adaptation, and the age of animals have no influence on it. In some relation the ontogenesis may be considered as a result of adaptation genesis. The metabolic memory can change the answer of the system to the stress influence. There are three types of modification of the answer to stress factors: the answer remains unchanged (metabolic memory), "paradox answer" formation, and super activation of the metabolic system.

  10. Adenylate Kinase and AMP Signaling Networks: Metabolic Monitoring, Signal Communication and Body Energy Sensing

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Andre Terzic

    2009-04-01

    Full Text Available Adenylate kinase and downstream AMP signaling is an integrated metabolic monitoring system which reads the cellular energy state in order to tune and report signals to metabolic sensors. A network of adenylate kinase isoforms (AK1-AK7 are distributed throughout intracellular compartments, interstitial space and body fluids to regulate energetic and metabolic signaling circuits, securing efficient cell energy economy, signal communication and stress response. The dynamics of adenylate kinase-catalyzed phosphotransfer regulates multiple intracellular and extracellular energy-dependent and nucleotide signaling processes, including excitation-contraction coupling, hormone secretion, cell and ciliary motility, nuclear transport, energetics of cell cycle, DNA synthesis and repair, and developmental programming. Metabolomic analyses indicate that cellular, interstitial and blood AMP levels are potential metabolic signals associated with vital functions including body energy sensing, sleep, hibernation and food intake. Either low or excess AMP signaling has been linked to human disease such as diabetes, obesity and hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. Recent studies indicate that derangements in adenylate kinase-mediated energetic signaling due to mutations in AK1, AK2 or AK7 isoforms are associated with hemolytic anemia, reticular dysgenesis and ciliary dyskinesia. Moreover, hormonal, food and antidiabetic drug actions are frequently coupled to alterations of cellular AMP levels and associated signaling. Thus, by monitoring energy state and generating and distributing AMP metabolic signals adenylate kinase represents a unique hub within the cellular homeostatic network.

  11. Astroglial Metabolic Networks Sustain Hippocampal Synaptic Transmission

    Science.gov (United States)

    Rouach, Nathalie; Koulakoff, Annette; Abudara, Veronica; Willecke, Klaus; Giaume, Christian

    2008-12-01

    Astrocytes provide metabolic substrates to neurons in an activity-dependent manner. However, the molecular mechanisms involved in this function, as well as its role in synaptic transmission, remain unclear. Here, we show that the gap-junction subunit proteins connexin 43 and 30 allow intercellular trafficking of glucose and its metabolites through astroglial networks. This trafficking is regulated by glutamatergic synaptic activity mediated by AMPA receptors. In the absence of extracellular glucose, the delivery of glucose or lactate to astrocytes sustains glutamatergic synaptic transmission and epileptiform activity only when they are connected by gap junctions. These results indicate that astroglial gap junctions provide an activity-dependent intercellular pathway for the delivery of energetic metabolites from blood vessels to distal neurons.

  12. Astroglial metabolic networks sustain hippocampal synaptic transmission.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Rouach, Nathalie; Koulakoff, Annette; Abudara, Veronica; Willecke, Klaus; Giaume, Christian

    2008-12-05

    Astrocytes provide metabolic substrates to neurons in an activity-dependent manner. However, the molecular mechanisms involved in this function, as well as its role in synaptic transmission, remain unclear. Here, we show that the gap-junction subunit proteins connexin 43 and 30 allow intercellular trafficking of glucose and its metabolites through astroglial networks. This trafficking is regulated by glutamatergic synaptic activity mediated by AMPA receptors. In the absence of extracellular glucose, the delivery of glucose or lactate to astrocytes sustains glutamatergic synaptic transmission and epileptiform activity only when they are connected by gap junctions. These results indicate that astroglial gap junctions provide an activity-dependent intercellular pathway for the delivery of energetic metabolites from blood vessels to distal neurons.

  13. The Forward-Reverse Algorithm for Stochastic Reaction Networks

    KAUST Repository

    Bayer, Christian

    2015-01-07

    In this work, we present an extension of the forward-reverse algorithm by Bayer and Schoenmakers [2] to the context of stochastic reaction networks (SRNs). We then apply this bridge-generation technique to the statistical inference problem of approximating the reaction coefficients based on discretely observed data. To this end, we introduce a two-phase iterative inference method in which we solve a set of deterministic optimization problems where the SRNs are replaced by the classical ODE rates; then, during the second phase, the Monte Carlo version of the EM algorithm is applied starting from the output of the previous phase. Starting from a set of over-dispersed seeds, the output of our two-phase method is a cluster of maximum likelihood estimates obtained by using convergence assessment techniques from the theory of Markov chain Monte Carlo.

  14. Effects of velocity and weight support on ground reaction forces and metabolic power during running.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Grabowski, Alena M; Kram, Rodger

    2008-08-01

    The biomechanical and metabolic demands of human running are distinctly affected by velocity and body weight. As runners increase velocity, ground reaction forces (GRF) increase, which may increase the risk of an overuse injury, and more metabolic power is required to produce greater rates of muscular force generation. Running with weight support attenuates GRFs, but demands less metabolic power than normal weight running. We used a recently developed device (G-trainer) that uses positive air pressure around the lower body to support body weight during treadmill running. Our scientific goal was to quantify the separate and combined effects of running velocity and weight support on GRFs and metabolic power. After obtaining this basic data set, we identified velocity and weight support combinations that resulted in different peak GRFs, yet demanded the same metabolic power. Ideal combinations of velocity and weight could potentially reduce biomechanical risks by attenuating peak GRFs while maintaining aerobic and neuromuscular benefits. Indeed, we found many combinations that decreased peak vertical GRFs yet demanded the same metabolic power as running slower at normal weight. This approach of manipulating velocity and weight during running may prove effective as a training and/or rehabilitation strategy.

  15. Rhinal hypometabolism on FDG PET in healthy APO-E4 carriers: impact on memory function and metabolic networks

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Didic, Mira; Felician, Olivier; Gour, Natalina; Ceccaldi, Mathieu; Bernard, Rafaelle; Pecheux, Christophe; Mundler, Olivier; Guedj, Eric

    2015-01-01

    The ε4 allele of the apolipoprotein E (APO-E4) gene, a genetic risk factor for Alzheimer's disease (AD), also modulates brain metabolism and function in healthy subjects. The aim of the present study was to explore cerebral metabolism using FDG PET in healthy APO-E4 carriers by comparing cognitively normal APO-E4 carriers to noncarriers and to assess if patterns of metabolism are correlated with performance on cognitive tasks. Moreover, metabolic connectivity patterns were established in order to assess if the organization of neural networks is influenced by genetic factors. Whole-brain PET statistical analysis was performed at voxel-level using SPM8 with a threshold of p < 0.005, corrected for volume, with age, gender and level of education as nuisance variables. Significant hypometabolism between APO-E4 carriers (n = 11) and noncarriers (n = 30) was first determined. Mean metabolic values with clinical/neuropsychological data were extracted at the individual level, and correlations were searched using Spearman's rank test in the whole group. To evaluate metabolic connectivity from metabolic cluster(s) previously identified in the intergroup comparison, voxel-wise interregional correlation analysis (IRCA) was performed between groups of subjects. APO-E4 carriers had reduced metabolism within the left anterior medial temporal lobe (MTL), where neuropathological changes first appear in AD, including the entorhinal and perirhinal cortices. A correlation between metabolism in this area and performance on the DMS48 (delayed matching to sample-48 items) was found, in line with converging evidence involving the perirhinal cortex in object-based memory. Finally, a voxel-wise IRCA revealed stronger metabolic connectivity of the MTL cluster with neocortical frontoparietal regions in carriers than in noncarriers, suggesting compensatory metabolic networks. Exploring cerebral metabolism using FDG PET can contribute to a better understanding of the influence of

  16. Rhinal hypometabolism on FDG PET in healthy APO-E4 carriers: impact on memory function and metabolic networks

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Didic, Mira; Felician, Olivier; Gour, Natalina; Ceccaldi, Mathieu [Pole de Neurosciences Cliniques, Centre Hospitalo-Universitaire de la Timone, AP-HM, Service de Neurologie and Neuropsychologie, Marseille (France); Aix Marseille Universite, Inserm, INS UMRS 1106, Marseille (France); Bernard, Rafaelle; Pecheux, Christophe [Centre Hospitalo-Universitaire de la Timone, AP-HM, et INSERM UMRS 910: ' ' Genetique Medicale et Genomique fonctionnelle' ' , Departement de Genetique Medicale, Marseille (France); Mundler, Olivier; Guedj, Eric [Centre Hospitalo-Universitaire de la Timone, AP-HM, Service Central de Biophysique et Medecine Nucleaire, Marseille (France); Aix Marseille Universite, CERIMED, CNRS UMR7289, INT, Marseille (France); Aix Marseille Universite, CNRS UMR7289, INT, Marseille (France)

    2015-09-15

    The ε4 allele of the apolipoprotein E (APO-E4) gene, a genetic risk factor for Alzheimer's disease (AD), also modulates brain metabolism and function in healthy subjects. The aim of the present study was to explore cerebral metabolism using FDG PET in healthy APO-E4 carriers by comparing cognitively normal APO-E4 carriers to noncarriers and to assess if patterns of metabolism are correlated with performance on cognitive tasks. Moreover, metabolic connectivity patterns were established in order to assess if the organization of neural networks is influenced by genetic factors. Whole-brain PET statistical analysis was performed at voxel-level using SPM8 with a threshold of p < 0.005, corrected for volume, with age, gender and level of education as nuisance variables. Significant hypometabolism between APO-E4 carriers (n = 11) and noncarriers (n = 30) was first determined. Mean metabolic values with clinical/neuropsychological data were extracted at the individual level, and correlations were searched using Spearman's rank test in the whole group. To evaluate metabolic connectivity from metabolic cluster(s) previously identified in the intergroup comparison, voxel-wise interregional correlation analysis (IRCA) was performed between groups of subjects. APO-E4 carriers had reduced metabolism within the left anterior medial temporal lobe (MTL), where neuropathological changes first appear in AD, including the entorhinal and perirhinal cortices. A correlation between metabolism in this area and performance on the DMS48 (delayed matching to sample-48 items) was found, in line with converging evidence involving the perirhinal cortex in object-based memory. Finally, a voxel-wise IRCA revealed stronger metabolic connectivity of the MTL cluster with neocortical frontoparietal regions in carriers than in noncarriers, suggesting compensatory metabolic networks. Exploring cerebral metabolism using FDG PET can contribute to a better understanding of the influence of

  17. Metabolic alkene labeling and in vitro detection of histone acylation via the aqueous oxidative Heck reaction

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Ourailidou, Maria E; Dockerty, Paul; Witte, Martin; Poelarends, Gerrit J; Dekker, Frank J

    2015-01-01

    The detection of protein lysine acylations remains a challenge due to lack of specific antibodies for acylations with various chain lengths. This problem can be addressed by metabolic labeling techniques using carboxylates with reactive functionalities. Subsequent chemoselective reactions with a

  18. EnzDP: improved enzyme annotation for metabolic network reconstruction based on domain composition profiles.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Nguyen, Nam-Ninh; Srihari, Sriganesh; Leong, Hon Wai; Chong, Ket-Fah

    2015-10-01

    Determining the entire complement of enzymes and their enzymatic functions is a fundamental step for reconstructing the metabolic network of cells. High quality enzyme annotation helps in enhancing metabolic networks reconstructed from the genome, especially by reducing gaps and increasing the enzyme coverage. Currently, structure-based and network-based approaches can only cover a limited number of enzyme families, and the accuracy of homology-based approaches can be further improved. Bottom-up homology-based approach improves the coverage by rebuilding Hidden Markov Model (HMM) profiles for all known enzymes. However, its clustering procedure relies firmly on BLAST similarity score, ignoring protein domains/patterns, and is sensitive to changes in cut-off thresholds. Here, we use functional domain architecture to score the association between domain families and enzyme families (Domain-Enzyme Association Scoring, DEAS). The DEAS score is used to calculate the similarity between proteins, which is then used in clustering procedure, instead of using sequence similarity score. We improve the enzyme annotation protocol using a stringent classification procedure, and by choosing optimal threshold settings and checking for active sites. Our analysis shows that our stringent protocol EnzDP can cover up to 90% of enzyme families available in Swiss-Prot. It achieves a high accuracy of 94.5% based on five-fold cross-validation. EnzDP outperforms existing methods across several testing scenarios. Thus, EnzDP serves as a reliable automated tool for enzyme annotation and metabolic network reconstruction. Available at: www.comp.nus.edu.sg/~nguyennn/EnzDP .

  19. Identification of alterations in the Jacobian of biochemical reaction networks from steady state covariance data at two conditions.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kügler, Philipp; Yang, Wei

    2014-06-01

    Model building of biochemical reaction networks typically involves experiments in which changes in the behavior due to natural or experimental perturbations are observed. Computational models of reaction networks are also used in a systems biology approach to study how transitions from a healthy to a diseased state result from changes in genetic or environmental conditions. In this paper we consider the nonlinear inverse problem of inferring information about the Jacobian of a Langevin type network model from covariance data of steady state concentrations associated to two different experimental conditions. Under idealized assumptions on the Langevin fluctuation matrices we prove that relative alterations in the network Jacobian can be uniquely identified when comparing the two data sets. Based on this result and the premise that alteration is locally confined to separable parts due to network modularity we suggest a computational approach using hybrid stochastic-deterministic optimization for the detection of perturbations in the network Jacobian using the sparsity promoting effect of [Formula: see text]-penalization. Our approach is illustrated by means of published metabolomic and signaling reaction networks.

  20. HRSSA – Efficient hybrid stochastic simulation for spatially homogeneous biochemical reaction networks

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Marchetti, Luca; Priami, Corrado; Thanh, Vo Hong

    2016-01-01

    This paper introduces HRSSA (Hybrid Rejection-based Stochastic Simulation Algorithm), a new efficient hybrid stochastic simulation algorithm for spatially homogeneous biochemical reaction networks. HRSSA is built on top of RSSA, an exact stochastic simulation algorithm which relies on propensity bounds to select next reaction firings and to reduce the average number of reaction propensity updates needed during the simulation. HRSSA exploits the computational advantage of propensity bounds to manage time-varying transition propensities and to apply dynamic partitioning of reactions, which constitute the two most significant bottlenecks of hybrid simulation. A comprehensive set of simulation benchmarks is provided for evaluating performance and accuracy of HRSSA against other state of the art algorithms.

  1. HRSSA – Efficient hybrid stochastic simulation for spatially homogeneous biochemical reaction networks

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Marchetti, Luca, E-mail: marchetti@cosbi.eu [The Microsoft Research – University of Trento Centre for Computational and Systems Biology (COSBI), Piazza Manifattura, 1, 38068 Rovereto (Italy); Priami, Corrado, E-mail: priami@cosbi.eu [The Microsoft Research – University of Trento Centre for Computational and Systems Biology (COSBI), Piazza Manifattura, 1, 38068 Rovereto (Italy); University of Trento, Department of Mathematics (Italy); Thanh, Vo Hong, E-mail: vo@cosbi.eu [The Microsoft Research – University of Trento Centre for Computational and Systems Biology (COSBI), Piazza Manifattura, 1, 38068 Rovereto (Italy)

    2016-07-15

    This paper introduces HRSSA (Hybrid Rejection-based Stochastic Simulation Algorithm), a new efficient hybrid stochastic simulation algorithm for spatially homogeneous biochemical reaction networks. HRSSA is built on top of RSSA, an exact stochastic simulation algorithm which relies on propensity bounds to select next reaction firings and to reduce the average number of reaction propensity updates needed during the simulation. HRSSA exploits the computational advantage of propensity bounds to manage time-varying transition propensities and to apply dynamic partitioning of reactions, which constitute the two most significant bottlenecks of hybrid simulation. A comprehensive set of simulation benchmarks is provided for evaluating performance and accuracy of HRSSA against other state of the art algorithms.

  2. Impact of stoichiometry representation on simulation of genotype-phenotype relationships in metabolic networks

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Brochado, Ana Rita; Andrejev, Sergej; Maranas, Costas D.

    2012-01-01

    the formulation of the desired objective functions, by casting objective functions using metabolite turnovers rather than fluxes. By simulating perturbed metabolic networks, we demonstrate that the use of stoichiometry representation independent algorithms is fundamental for unambiguously linking modeling results...

  3. Reframed Genome-Scale Metabolic Model to Facilitate Genetic Design and Integration with Expression Data.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gu, Deqing; Jian, Xingxing; Zhang, Cheng; Hua, Qiang

    2017-01-01

    Genome-scale metabolic network models (GEMs) have played important roles in the design of genetically engineered strains and helped biologists to decipher metabolism. However, due to the complex gene-reaction relationships that exist in model systems, most algorithms have limited capabilities with respect to directly predicting accurate genetic design for metabolic engineering. In particular, methods that predict reaction knockout strategies leading to overproduction are often impractical in terms of gene manipulations. Recently, we proposed a method named logical transformation of model (LTM) to simplify the gene-reaction associations by introducing intermediate pseudo reactions, which makes it possible to generate genetic design. Here, we propose an alternative method to relieve researchers from deciphering complex gene-reactions by adding pseudo gene controlling reactions. In comparison to LTM, this new method introduces fewer pseudo reactions and generates a much smaller model system named as gModel. We showed that gModel allows two seldom reported applications: identification of minimal genomes and design of minimal cell factories within a modified OptKnock framework. In addition, gModel could be used to integrate expression data directly and improve the performance of the E-Fmin method for predicting fluxes. In conclusion, the model transformation procedure will facilitate genetic research based on GEMs, extending their applications.

  4. Metabolic Modeling of Common Escherichia coli Strains in Human Gut Microbiome

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Yue-Dong Gao

    2014-01-01

    Full Text Available The recent high-throughput sequencing has enabled the composition of Escherichia coli strains in the human microbial community to be profiled en masse. However, there are two challenges to address: (1 exploring the genetic differences between E. coli strains in human gut and (2 dynamic responses of E. coli to diverse stress conditions. As a result, we investigated the E. coli strains in human gut microbiome using deep sequencing data and reconstructed genome-wide metabolic networks for the three most common E. coli strains, including E. coli HS, UTI89, and CFT073. The metabolic models show obvious strain-specific characteristics, both in network contents and in behaviors. We predicted optimal biomass production for three models on four different carbon sources (acetate, ethanol, glucose, and succinate and found that these stress-associated genes were involved in host-microbial interactions and increased in human obesity. Besides, it shows that the growth rates are similar among the models, but the flux distributions are different, even in E. coli core reactions. The correlations between human diabetes-associated metabolic reactions in the E. coli models were also predicted. The study provides a systems perspective on E. coli strains in human gut microbiome and will be helpful in integrating diverse data sources in the following study.

  5. Metabolic Brain Network Analysis of Hypothyroidism Symptom Based on [18F]FDG-PET of Rats.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wan, Hongkai; Tan, Ziyu; Zheng, Qiang; Yu, Jing

    2018-03-12

    Recent researches have demonstrated the value of using 2-deoxy-2-[ 18 F]fluoro-D-glucose ([ 18 F]FDG) positron emission tomography (PET) imaging to reveal the hypothyroidism-related damages in local brain regions. However, the influence of hypothyroidism on the entire brain network is barely studied. This study focuses on the application of graph theory on analyzing functional brain networks of the hypothyroidism symptom. For both the hypothyroidism and the control groups of Wistar rats, the functional brain networks were constructed by thresholding the glucose metabolism correlation matrices of 58 brain regions. The network topological properties (including the small-world properties and the nodal centralities) were calculated and compared between the two groups. We found that the rat brains, like human brains, have typical properties of the small-world network in both the hypothyroidism and the control groups. However, the hypothyroidism group demonstrated lower global efficiency and decreased local cliquishness of the brain network, indicating hypothyroidism-related impairment to the brain network. The hypothyroidism group also has decreased nodal centrality in the left posterior hippocampus, the right hypothalamus, pituitary, pons, and medulla. This observation accorded with the hypothyroidism-related functional disorder of hypothalamus-pituitary-thyroid (HPT) feedback regulation mechanism. Our research quantitatively confirms that hypothyroidism hampers brain cognitive function by causing impairment to the brain network of glucose metabolism. This study reveals the feasibility and validity of applying graph theory method to preclinical [ 18 F]FDG-PET images and facilitates future study on human subjects.

  6. Metabolic networks of Cucurbita maxima phloem.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Fiehn, Oliver

    2003-03-01

    Metabolomic analysis aims at a comprehensive characterization of biological samples. Yet, biologically meaningful interpretations are often limited by the poor spatial and temporal resolution of the acquired data sets. One way to remedy this is to limit the complexity of the cell types being studied. Cucurbita maxima Duch. vascular exudates provide an excellent material for metabolomics in this regard. Using automated mass spectral deconvolution, over 400 components have been detected in these exudates, but only 90 of them were tentatively identified. Many amino compounds were found in vascular exudates from leaf petioles at concentrations several orders of magnitude higher than in tissue disks from the same leaves, whereas hexoses and sucrose were found in far lower amounts. In order to find the expected impact of assimilation rates on sugar levels, total phloem composition of eight leaves from four plants was followed over 4.5 days. Surprisingly, no diurnal rhythm was found for any of the phloem metabolites that was statistically valid for all eight leaves. Instead, each leaf had its own distinct vascular exudate profile similar to leaves from the same plant, but clearly different from leaves harvested from plants at the same developmental stage. Thirty to forty per cent of all metabolite levels of individual leaves were different from the average of all metabolite profiles. Using metabolic co-regulation analysis, similarities and differences between the exudate profiles were more accurately characterized through network computation, specifically with respect to nitrogen metabolism.

  7. Critical regimes driven by recurrent mobility patterns of reaction-diffusion processes in networks

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gómez-Gardeñes, J.; Soriano-Paños, D.; Arenas, A.

    2018-04-01

    Reaction-diffusion processes1 have been widely used to study dynamical processes in epidemics2-4 and ecology5 in networked metapopulations. In the context of epidemics6, reaction processes are understood as contagions within each subpopulation (patch), while diffusion represents the mobility of individuals between patches. Recently, the characteristics of human mobility7, such as its recurrent nature, have been proven crucial to understand the phase transition to endemic epidemic states8,9. Here, by developing a framework able to cope with the elementary epidemic processes, the spatial distribution of populations and the commuting mobility patterns, we discover three different critical regimes of the epidemic incidence as a function of these parameters. Interestingly, we reveal a regime of the reaction-diffussion process in which, counter-intuitively, mobility is detrimental to the spread of disease. We analytically determine the precise conditions for the emergence of any of the three possible critical regimes in real and synthetic networks.

  8. Traveling and Pinned Fronts in Bistable Reaction-Diffusion Systems on Networks

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kouvaris, Nikos E.; Kori, Hiroshi; Mikhailov, Alexander S.

    2012-01-01

    Traveling fronts and stationary localized patterns in bistable reaction-diffusion systems have been broadly studied for classical continuous media and regular lattices. Analogs of such non-equilibrium patterns are also possible in networks. Here, we consider traveling and stationary patterns in bistable one-component systems on random Erdös-Rényi, scale-free and hierarchical tree networks. As revealed through numerical simulations, traveling fronts exist in network-organized systems. They represent waves of transition from one stable state into another, spreading over the entire network. The fronts can furthermore be pinned, thus forming stationary structures. While pinning of fronts has previously been considered for chains of diffusively coupled bistable elements, the network architecture brings about significant differences. An important role is played by the degree (the number of connections) of a node. For regular trees with a fixed branching factor, the pinning conditions are analytically determined. For large Erdös-Rényi and scale-free networks, the mean-field theory for stationary patterns is constructed. PMID:23028746

  9. Systematic Analysis Reveals that Cancer Mutations Converge on Deregulated Metabolism of Arachidonate and Xenobiotics

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Francesco Gatto

    2016-07-01

    Full Text Available Mutations are the basis of the clonal evolution of most cancers. Nevertheless, a systematic analysis of whether mutations are selected in cancer because they lead to the deregulation of specific biological processes independent of the type of cancer is still lacking. In this study, we correlated the genome and transcriptome of 1,082 tumors. We found that nine commonly mutated genes correlated with substantial changes in gene expression, which primarily converged on metabolism. Further network analyses circumscribed the convergence to a network of reactions, termed AraX, that involves the glutathione- and oxygen-mediated metabolism of arachidonic acid and xenobiotics. In an independent cohort of 4,462 samples, all nine mutated genes were consistently correlated with the deregulation of AraX. Among all of the metabolic pathways, AraX deregulation represented the strongest predictor of patient survival. These findings suggest that oncogenic mutations drive a selection process that converges on the deregulation of the AraX network.

  10. Modeling of Zymomonas mobilis central metabolism for novel metabolic engineering strategies.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kalnenieks, Uldis; Pentjuss, Agris; Rutkis, Reinis; Stalidzans, Egils; Fell, David A

    2014-01-01

    Mathematical modeling of metabolism is essential for rational metabolic engineering. The present work focuses on several types of modeling approach to quantitative understanding of central metabolic network and energetics in the bioethanol-producing bacterium Zymomonas mobilis. Combined use of Flux Balance, Elementary Flux Mode, and thermodynamic analysis of its central metabolism, together with dynamic modeling of the core catabolic pathways, can help to design novel substrate and product pathways by systematically analyzing the solution space for metabolic engineering, and yields insights into the function of metabolic network, hardly achievable without applying modeling tools.

  11. Reduced linear noise approximation for biochemical reaction networks with time-scale separation: The stochastic tQSSA+

    Science.gov (United States)

    Herath, Narmada; Del Vecchio, Domitilla

    2018-03-01

    Biochemical reaction networks often involve reactions that take place on different time scales, giving rise to "slow" and "fast" system variables. This property is widely used in the analysis of systems to obtain dynamical models with reduced dimensions. In this paper, we consider stochastic dynamics of biochemical reaction networks modeled using the Linear Noise Approximation (LNA). Under time-scale separation conditions, we obtain a reduced-order LNA that approximates both the slow and fast variables in the system. We mathematically prove that the first and second moments of this reduced-order model converge to those of the full system as the time-scale separation becomes large. These mathematical results, in particular, provide a rigorous justification to the accuracy of LNA models derived using the stochastic total quasi-steady state approximation (tQSSA). Since, in contrast to the stochastic tQSSA, our reduced-order model also provides approximations for the fast variable stochastic properties, we term our method the "stochastic tQSSA+". Finally, we demonstrate the application of our approach on two biochemical network motifs found in gene-regulatory and signal transduction networks.

  12. Inferring transcriptional gene regulation network of starch metabolism in Arabidopsis thaliana leaves using graphical Gaussian model

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Ingkasuwan Papapit

    2012-08-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background Starch serves as a temporal storage of carbohydrates in plant leaves during day/night cycles. To study transcriptional regulatory modules of this dynamic metabolic process, we conducted gene regulation network analysis based on small-sample inference of graphical Gaussian model (GGM. Results Time-series significant analysis was applied for Arabidopsis leaf transcriptome data to obtain a set of genes that are highly regulated under a diurnal cycle. A total of 1,480 diurnally regulated genes included 21 starch metabolic enzymes, 6 clock-associated genes, and 106 transcription factors (TF. A starch-clock-TF gene regulation network comprising 117 nodes and 266 edges was constructed by GGM from these 133 significant genes that are potentially related to the diurnal control of starch metabolism. From this network, we found that β-amylase 3 (b-amy3: At4g17090, which participates in starch degradation in chloroplast, is the most frequently connected gene (a hub gene. The robustness of gene-to-gene regulatory network was further analyzed by TF binding site prediction and by evaluating global co-expression of TFs and target starch metabolic enzymes. As a result, two TFs, indeterminate domain 5 (AtIDD5: At2g02070 and constans-like (COL: At2g21320, were identified as positive regulators of starch synthase 4 (SS4: At4g18240. The inference model of AtIDD5-dependent positive regulation of SS4 gene expression was experimentally supported by decreased SS4 mRNA accumulation in Atidd5 mutant plants during the light period of both short and long day conditions. COL was also shown to positively control SS4 mRNA accumulation. Furthermore, the knockout of AtIDD5 and COL led to deformation of chloroplast and its contained starch granules. This deformity also affected the number of starch granules per chloroplast, which increased significantly in both knockout mutant lines. Conclusions In this study, we utilized a systematic approach of microarray

  13. Doubly Periodic Traveling Waves in a Cellular Neural Network with Linear Reaction

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Lin JianJhong

    2009-01-01

    Full Text Available Szekeley observed that the dynamic pattern of the locomotion of salamanders can be explained by periodic vector sequences generated by logical neural networks. Such sequences can mathematically be described by "doubly periodic traveling waves" and therefore it is of interest to propose dynamic models that may produce such waves. One such dynamic network model is built here based on reaction-diffusion principles and a complete discussion is given for the existence of doubly periodic waves as outputs. Since there are 2 parameters in our model and 4 a priori unknown parameters involved in our search of solutions, our results are nontrivial. The reaction term in our model is a linear function and hence our results can also be interpreted as existence criteria for solutions of a nontrivial linear problem depending on 6 parameters.

  14. Stability analysis of impulsive fuzzy cellular neural networks with distributed delays and reaction-diffusion terms

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Li Zuoan; Li Kelin

    2009-01-01

    In this paper, we investigate a class of impulsive fuzzy cellular neural networks with distributed delays and reaction-diffusion terms. By employing the delay differential inequality with impulsive initial conditions and M-matrix theory, we find some sufficient conditions ensuring the existence, uniqueness and global exponential stability of equilibrium point for impulsive fuzzy cellular neural networks with distributed delays and reaction-diffusion terms. In particular, the estimate of the exponential converging index is also provided, which depends on the system parameters. An example is given to show the effectiveness of the results obtained here.

  15. On the rejection-based algorithm for simulation and analysis of large-scale reaction networks

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Thanh, Vo Hong, E-mail: vo@cosbi.eu [The Microsoft Research-University of Trento Centre for Computational and Systems Biology, Piazza Manifattura 1, Rovereto 38068 (Italy); Zunino, Roberto, E-mail: roberto.zunino@unitn.it [Department of Mathematics, University of Trento, Trento (Italy); Priami, Corrado, E-mail: priami@cosbi.eu [The Microsoft Research-University of Trento Centre for Computational and Systems Biology, Piazza Manifattura 1, Rovereto 38068 (Italy); Department of Mathematics, University of Trento, Trento (Italy)

    2015-06-28

    Stochastic simulation for in silico studies of large biochemical networks requires a great amount of computational time. We recently proposed a new exact simulation algorithm, called the rejection-based stochastic simulation algorithm (RSSA) [Thanh et al., J. Chem. Phys. 141(13), 134116 (2014)], to improve simulation performance by postponing and collapsing as much as possible the propensity updates. In this paper, we analyze the performance of this algorithm in detail, and improve it for simulating large-scale biochemical reaction networks. We also present a new algorithm, called simultaneous RSSA (SRSSA), which generates many independent trajectories simultaneously for the analysis of the biochemical behavior. SRSSA improves simulation performance by utilizing a single data structure across simulations to select reaction firings and forming trajectories. The memory requirement for building and storing the data structure is thus independent of the number of trajectories. The updating of the data structure when needed is performed collectively in a single operation across the simulations. The trajectories generated by SRSSA are exact and independent of each other by exploiting the rejection-based mechanism. We test our new improvement on real biological systems with a wide range of reaction networks to demonstrate its applicability and efficiency.

  16. From elementary flux modes to elementary flux vectors: Metabolic pathway analysis with arbitrary linear flux constraints

    Science.gov (United States)

    Klamt, Steffen; Gerstl, Matthias P.; Jungreuthmayer, Christian; Mahadevan, Radhakrishnan; Müller, Stefan

    2017-01-01

    Elementary flux modes (EFMs) emerged as a formal concept to describe metabolic pathways and have become an established tool for constraint-based modeling and metabolic network analysis. EFMs are characteristic (support-minimal) vectors of the flux cone that contains all feasible steady-state flux vectors of a given metabolic network. EFMs account for (homogeneous) linear constraints arising from reaction irreversibilities and the assumption of steady state; however, other (inhomogeneous) linear constraints, such as minimal and maximal reaction rates frequently used by other constraint-based techniques (such as flux balance analysis [FBA]), cannot be directly integrated. These additional constraints further restrict the space of feasible flux vectors and turn the flux cone into a general flux polyhedron in which the concept of EFMs is not directly applicable anymore. For this reason, there has been a conceptual gap between EFM-based (pathway) analysis methods and linear optimization (FBA) techniques, as they operate on different geometric objects. One approach to overcome these limitations was proposed ten years ago and is based on the concept of elementary flux vectors (EFVs). Only recently has the community started to recognize the potential of EFVs for metabolic network analysis. In fact, EFVs exactly represent the conceptual development required to generalize the idea of EFMs from flux cones to flux polyhedra. This work aims to present a concise theoretical and practical introduction to EFVs that is accessible to a broad audience. We highlight the close relationship between EFMs and EFVs and demonstrate that almost all applications of EFMs (in flux cones) are possible for EFVs (in flux polyhedra) as well. In fact, certain properties can only be studied with EFVs. Thus, we conclude that EFVs provide a powerful and unifying framework for constraint-based modeling of metabolic networks. PMID:28406903

  17. Impact parameter determination for 40Ca + 40Ca reactions using a neural network

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Haddad, F.; Hagel, K.; Li, J.; Mdeiwayeh, N.; Natowitz, J.B.; Wada, R.; Xiao, B.; David, C.; Freslier, M.; Aichelin, J.

    1995-01-01

    A neural network is used for the impact parameter determination in 40 Ca + 40 Ca reactions at energies between 35 and 70 AMeV. A special attention is devoted to the effect of experimental constraints such as the detection efficiency. An overall improvement of the impact parameter determination of 25% is obtained with the neural network. The neural network technique is then used in the analysis of the Ca+Ca data at 35 AMeV and allows separation of three different class of events among the selected 'complete' events. (authors). 8 refs., 5 figs

  18. On the graph and systems analysis of reversible chemical reaction networks with mass action kinetics

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Rao, Shodhan; Jayawardhana, Bayu; Schaft, Arjan van der

    2012-01-01

    Motivated by the recent progresses on the interplay between the graph theory and systems theory, we revisit the analysis of reversible chemical reaction networks described by mass action kinetics by reformulating it using the graph knowledge of the underlying networks. Based on this formulation, we

  19. DMPy: a Python package for automated mathematical model construction of large-scale metabolic systems.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Smith, Robert W; van Rosmalen, Rik P; Martins Dos Santos, Vitor A P; Fleck, Christian

    2018-06-19

    Models of metabolism are often used in biotechnology and pharmaceutical research to identify drug targets or increase the direct production of valuable compounds. Due to the complexity of large metabolic systems, a number of conclusions have been drawn using mathematical methods with simplifying assumptions. For example, constraint-based models describe changes of internal concentrations that occur much quicker than alterations in cell physiology. Thus, metabolite concentrations and reaction fluxes are fixed to constant values. This greatly reduces the mathematical complexity, while providing a reasonably good description of the system in steady state. However, without a large number of constraints, many different flux sets can describe the optimal model and we obtain no information on how metabolite levels dynamically change. Thus, to accurately determine what is taking place within the cell, finer quality data and more detailed models need to be constructed. In this paper we present a computational framework, DMPy, that uses a network scheme as input to automatically search for kinetic rates and produce a mathematical model that describes temporal changes of metabolite fluxes. The parameter search utilises several online databases to find measured reaction parameters. From this, we take advantage of previous modelling efforts, such as Parameter Balancing, to produce an initial mathematical model of a metabolic pathway. We analyse the effect of parameter uncertainty on model dynamics and test how recent flux-based model reduction techniques alter system properties. To our knowledge this is the first time such analysis has been performed on large models of metabolism. Our results highlight that good estimates of at least 80% of the reaction rates are required to accurately model metabolic systems. Furthermore, reducing the size of the model by grouping reactions together based on fluxes alters the resulting system dynamics. The presented pipeline automates the

  20. DETECTION OF TOPOLOGICAL PATTERNS IN PROTEIN NETWORKS.

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    MASLOV,S.SNEPPEN,K.

    2003-11-17

    Complex networks appear in biology on many different levels: (1) All biochemical reactions taking place in a single cell constitute its metabolic network, where nodes are individual metabolites, and edges are metabolic reactions converting them to each other. (2) Virtually every one of these reactions is catalyzed by an enzyme and the specificity of this catalytic function is ensured by the key and lock principle of its physical interaction with the substrate. Often the functional enzyme is formed by several mutually interacting proteins. Thus the structure of the metabolic network is shaped by the network of physical interactions of cell's proteins with their substrates and each other. (3) The abundance and the level of activity of each of the proteins in the physical interaction network in turn is controlled by the regulatory network of the cell. Such regulatory network includes all of the multiple mechanisms in which proteins in the cell control each other including transcriptional and translational regulation, regulation of mRNA editing and its transport out of the nucleus, specific targeting of individual proteins for degradation, modification of their activity e.g. by phosphorylation/dephosphorylation or allosteric regulation, etc. To get some idea about the complexity and interconnectedness of protein-protein regulations in baker's yeast Saccharomyces Cerevisiae in Fig. 1 we show a part of the regulatory network corresponding to positive or negative regulations that regulatory proteins exert on each other. (4) On yet higher level individual cells of a multicellular organism exchange signals with each other. This gives rise to several new networks such as e.g. nervous, hormonal, and immune systems of animals. The intercellular signaling network stages the development of a multicellular organism from the fertilized egg. (5) Finally, on the grandest scale, the interactions between individual species in ecosystems determine their food webs. An

  1. Report on the IAEA Technical Meeting of the International Network of Nuclear Reaction Data Centres

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Forrest, R.; Dunaeva, S.; Otsuka, N.

    2010-07-01

    This report summarizes the IAEA Technical Meeting of the International Network of Nuclear Reaction Data Centres (biennial Data Centre Heads Meeting), held at the Japan Nuclear Reaction Data Centre, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan, from 20 - 23 April 2010. The meeting was attended by 27 participants from 12 cooperating data centres of seven Member States and two International Organizations. The report contains a summary of the meeting, the conclusions and actions, the lists of working papers and presentations presented at the meeting. This report summarizes the IAEA Technical Meeting of the International Network of Nuclear Reaction Data Centres (biennial Data Centre Heads Meeting), held at the Japan Nuclear Reaction Data Centre, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan, from 20 - 23 April 2010. The meeting was attended by 27 participants from 12 cooperating data centres of seven Member States and two International Organizations. The report contains a summary of the meeting, the conclusions and actions, the lists of working papers and presentations presented at the meeting. (author)

  2. Variable elimination in post-translational modification reaction networks with mass-action kinetics

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Feliu, Elisenda; Wiuf, Carsten

    2013-01-01

    We define a subclass of chemical reaction networks called post-translational modification systems. Important biological examples of such systems include MAPK cascades and two-component systems which are well-studied experimentally as well as theoretically. The steady states of such a system...

  3. Noise-Induced Modulation of the Relaxation Kinetics around a Non-Equilibrium Steady State of Non-Linear Chemical Reaction Networks

    OpenAIRE

    Ramaswamy, Rajesh; Sbalzarini, Ivo F; González-Segredo, Nélido

    2011-01-01

    Stochastic effects from correlated noise non-trivially modulate the kinetics of non-linear chemical reaction networks. This is especially important in systems where reactions are confined to small volumes and reactants are delivered in bursts. We characterise how the two noise sources confinement and burst modulate the relaxation kinetics of a non-linear reaction network around a non-equilibrium steady state. We find that the lifetimes of species change with burst input and confinement. Confi...

  4. The MetaCyc database of metabolic pathways and enzymes and the BioCyc collection of pathway/genome databases

    Science.gov (United States)

    Caspi, Ron; Altman, Tomer; Dale, Joseph M.; Dreher, Kate; Fulcher, Carol A.; Gilham, Fred; Kaipa, Pallavi; Karthikeyan, Athikkattuvalasu S.; Kothari, Anamika; Krummenacker, Markus; Latendresse, Mario; Mueller, Lukas A.; Paley, Suzanne; Popescu, Liviu; Pujar, Anuradha; Shearer, Alexander G.; Zhang, Peifen; Karp, Peter D.

    2010-01-01

    The MetaCyc database (MetaCyc.org) is a comprehensive and freely accessible resource for metabolic pathways and enzymes from all domains of life. The pathways in MetaCyc are experimentally determined, small-molecule metabolic pathways and are curated from the primary scientific literature. With more than 1400 pathways, MetaCyc is the largest collection of metabolic pathways currently available. Pathways reactions are linked to one or more well-characterized enzymes, and both pathways and enzymes are annotated with reviews, evidence codes, and literature citations. BioCyc (BioCyc.org) is a collection of more than 500 organism-specific Pathway/Genome Databases (PGDBs). Each BioCyc PGDB contains the full genome and predicted metabolic network of one organism. The network, which is predicted by the Pathway Tools software using MetaCyc as a reference, consists of metabolites, enzymes, reactions and metabolic pathways. BioCyc PGDBs also contain additional features, such as predicted operons, transport systems, and pathway hole-fillers. The BioCyc Web site offers several tools for the analysis of the PGDBs, including Omics Viewers that enable visualization of omics datasets on two different genome-scale diagrams and tools for comparative analysis. The BioCyc PGDBs generated by SRI are offered for adoption by any party interested in curation of metabolic, regulatory, and genome-related information about an organism. PMID:19850718

  5. Stationary patterns in star networks of bistable units: Theory and application to chemical reactions.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kouvaris, Nikos E; Sebek, Michael; Iribarne, Albert; Díaz-Guilera, Albert; Kiss, István Z

    2017-04-01

    We present theoretical and experimental studies on pattern formation with bistable dynamical units coupled in a star network configuration. By applying a localized perturbation to the central or the peripheral elements, we demonstrate the subsequent spreading, pinning, or retraction of the activations; such analysis enables the characterization of the formation of stationary patterns of localized activity. The results are interpreted with a theoretical analysis of a simplified bistable reaction-diffusion model. Weak coupling results in trivial pinned states where the activation cannot propagate. At strong coupling, a uniform state is expected with active or inactive elements at small or large degree networks, respectively. A nontrivial stationary spatial pattern, corresponding to an activation pinning, is predicted to occur at an intermediate number of peripheral elements and at intermediate coupling strengths, where the central activation of the network is pinned, but the peripheral activation propagates toward the center. The results are confirmed in experiments with star networks of bistable electrochemical reactions. The experiments confirm the existence of the stationary spatial patterns and the dependence of coupling strength on the number of peripheral elements for transitions between pinned and retreating or spreading fronts in forced network configurations (where the central or periphery elements are forced to maintain their states).

  6. Parameter estimation in tree graph metabolic networks

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Laura Astola

    2016-09-01

    Full Text Available We study the glycosylation processes that convert initially toxic substrates to nutritionally valuable metabolites in the flavonoid biosynthesis pathway of tomato (Solanum lycopersicum seedlings. To estimate the reaction rates we use ordinary differential equations (ODEs to model the enzyme kinetics. A popular choice is to use a system of linear ODEs with constant kinetic rates or to use Michaelis–Menten kinetics. In reality, the catalytic rates, which are affected among other factors by kinetic constants and enzyme concentrations, are changing in time and with the approaches just mentioned, this phenomenon cannot be described. Another problem is that, in general these kinetic coefficients are not always identifiable. A third problem is that, it is not precisely known which enzymes are catalyzing the observed glycosylation processes. With several hundred potential gene candidates, experimental validation using purified target proteins is expensive and time consuming. We aim at reducing this task via mathematical modeling to allow for the pre-selection of most potential gene candidates. In this article we discuss a fast and relatively simple approach to estimate time varying kinetic rates, with three favorable properties: firstly, it allows for identifiable estimation of time dependent parameters in networks with a tree-like structure. Secondly, it is relatively fast compared to usually applied methods that estimate the model derivatives together with the network parameters. Thirdly, by combining the metabolite concentration data with a corresponding microarray data, it can help in detecting the genes related to the enzymatic processes. By comparing the estimated time dynamics of the catalytic rates with time series gene expression data we may assess potential candidate genes behind enzymatic reactions. As an example, we show how to apply this method to select prominent glycosyltransferase genes in tomato seedlings.

  7. Parameter estimation in tree graph metabolic networks.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Astola, Laura; Stigter, Hans; Gomez Roldan, Maria Victoria; van Eeuwijk, Fred; Hall, Robert D; Groenenboom, Marian; Molenaar, Jaap J

    2016-01-01

    We study the glycosylation processes that convert initially toxic substrates to nutritionally valuable metabolites in the flavonoid biosynthesis pathway of tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) seedlings. To estimate the reaction rates we use ordinary differential equations (ODEs) to model the enzyme kinetics. A popular choice is to use a system of linear ODEs with constant kinetic rates or to use Michaelis-Menten kinetics. In reality, the catalytic rates, which are affected among other factors by kinetic constants and enzyme concentrations, are changing in time and with the approaches just mentioned, this phenomenon cannot be described. Another problem is that, in general these kinetic coefficients are not always identifiable. A third problem is that, it is not precisely known which enzymes are catalyzing the observed glycosylation processes. With several hundred potential gene candidates, experimental validation using purified target proteins is expensive and time consuming. We aim at reducing this task via mathematical modeling to allow for the pre-selection of most potential gene candidates. In this article we discuss a fast and relatively simple approach to estimate time varying kinetic rates, with three favorable properties: firstly, it allows for identifiable estimation of time dependent parameters in networks with a tree-like structure. Secondly, it is relatively fast compared to usually applied methods that estimate the model derivatives together with the network parameters. Thirdly, by combining the metabolite concentration data with a corresponding microarray data, it can help in detecting the genes related to the enzymatic processes. By comparing the estimated time dynamics of the catalytic rates with time series gene expression data we may assess potential candidate genes behind enzymatic reactions. As an example, we show how to apply this method to select prominent glycosyltransferase genes in tomato seedlings.

  8. Modeling stochasticity in biochemical reaction networks

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Constantino, P H; Vlysidis, M; Smadbeck, P; Kaznessis, Y N

    2016-01-01

    Small biomolecular systems are inherently stochastic. Indeed, fluctuations of molecular species are substantial in living organisms and may result in significant variation in cellular phenotypes. The chemical master equation (CME) is the most detailed mathematical model that can describe stochastic behaviors. However, because of its complexity the CME has been solved for only few, very small reaction networks. As a result, the contribution of CME-based approaches to biology has been very limited. In this review we discuss the approach of solving CME by a set of differential equations of probability moments, called moment equations. We present different approaches to produce and to solve these equations, emphasizing the use of factorial moments and the zero information entropy closure scheme. We also provide information on the stability analysis of stochastic systems. Finally, we speculate on the utility of CME-based modeling formalisms, especially in the context of synthetic biology efforts. (topical review)

  9. Metabolic Vascular Syndrome: New Insights into a Multidimensional Network of Risk Factors and Diseases.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Scholz, Gerhard H; Hanefeld, Markolf

    2016-10-01

    Since 1981, we have used the term metabolic syndrome to describe an association of a dysregulation in lipid metabolism (high triglycerides, low high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, disturbed glucose homeostasis (enhanced fasting and/or prandial glucose), gout, and hypertension), with android obesity being based on a common soil (overnutrition, reduced physical activity, sociocultural factors, and genetic predisposition). We hypothesized that main traits of the syndrome occur early and are tightly connected with hyperinsulinemia/insulin resistance, procoagulation, and cardiovascular diseases. To establish a close link between the traits of the metabolic vascular syndrome, we focused our literature search on recent original work and comprehensive reviews dealing with the topics metabolic syndrome, visceral obesity, fatty liver, fat tissue inflammation, insulin resistance, atherogenic dyslipidemia, arterial hypertension, and type 2 diabetes mellitus. Recent research supports the concept that the metabolic vascular syndrome is a multidimensional and interactive network of risk factors and diseases based on individual genetic susceptibility and epigenetic changes where metabolic dysregulation/metabolic inflexibility in different organs and vascular dysfunction are early interconnected. The metabolic vascular syndrome is not only a risk factor constellation but rather a life-long abnormality of a closely connected interactive cluster of developing diseases which escalate each other and should continuously attract the attention of every clinician.

  10. Hierarchical feedback modules and reaction hubs in cell signaling networks.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Xu, Jianfeng; Lan, Yueheng

    2015-01-01

    Despite much effort, identification of modular structures and study of their organizing and functional roles remain a formidable challenge in molecular systems biology, which, however, is essential in reaching a systematic understanding of large-scale cell regulation networks and hence gaining capacity of exerting effective interference to cell activity. Combining graph theoretic methods with available dynamics information, we successfully retrieved multiple feedback modules of three important signaling networks. These feedbacks are structurally arranged in a hierarchical way and dynamically produce layered temporal profiles of output signals. We found that global and local feedbacks act in very different ways and on distinct features of the information flow conveyed by signal transduction but work highly coordinately to implement specific biological functions. The redundancy embodied with multiple signal-relaying channels and feedback controls bestow great robustness and the reaction hubs seated at junctions of different paths announce their paramount importance through exquisite parameter management. The current investigation reveals intriguing general features of the organization of cell signaling networks and their relevance to biological function, which may find interesting applications in analysis, design and control of bio-networks.

  11. Hierarchical feedback modules and reaction hubs in cell signaling networks.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Jianfeng Xu

    Full Text Available Despite much effort, identification of modular structures and study of their organizing and functional roles remain a formidable challenge in molecular systems biology, which, however, is essential in reaching a systematic understanding of large-scale cell regulation networks and hence gaining capacity of exerting effective interference to cell activity. Combining graph theoretic methods with available dynamics information, we successfully retrieved multiple feedback modules of three important signaling networks. These feedbacks are structurally arranged in a hierarchical way and dynamically produce layered temporal profiles of output signals. We found that global and local feedbacks act in very different ways and on distinct features of the information flow conveyed by signal transduction but work highly coordinately to implement specific biological functions. The redundancy embodied with multiple signal-relaying channels and feedback controls bestow great robustness and the reaction hubs seated at junctions of different paths announce their paramount importance through exquisite parameter management. The current investigation reveals intriguing general features of the organization of cell signaling networks and their relevance to biological function, which may find interesting applications in analysis, design and control of bio-networks.

  12. Hierarchical Feedback Modules and Reaction Hubs in Cell Signaling Networks

    Science.gov (United States)

    Xu, Jianfeng; Lan, Yueheng

    2015-01-01

    Despite much effort, identification of modular structures and study of their organizing and functional roles remain a formidable challenge in molecular systems biology, which, however, is essential in reaching a systematic understanding of large-scale cell regulation networks and hence gaining capacity of exerting effective interference to cell activity. Combining graph theoretic methods with available dynamics information, we successfully retrieved multiple feedback modules of three important signaling networks. These feedbacks are structurally arranged in a hierarchical way and dynamically produce layered temporal profiles of output signals. We found that global and local feedbacks act in very different ways and on distinct features of the information flow conveyed by signal transduction but work highly coordinately to implement specific biological functions. The redundancy embodied with multiple signal-relaying channels and feedback controls bestow great robustness and the reaction hubs seated at junctions of different paths announce their paramount importance through exquisite parameter management. The current investigation reveals intriguing general features of the organization of cell signaling networks and their relevance to biological function, which may find interesting applications in analysis, design and control of bio-networks. PMID:25951347

  13. Global exponential stability of impulsive fuzzy cellular neural networks with mixed delays and reaction-diffusion terms

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Wang Xiaohu; Xu Daoyi

    2009-01-01

    In this paper, the global exponential stability of impulsive fuzzy cellular neural networks with mixed delays and reaction-diffusion terms is considered. By establishing an integro-differential inequality with impulsive initial condition and using the properties of M-cone and eigenspace of the spectral radius of nonnegative matrices, several new sufficient conditions are obtained to ensure the global exponential stability of the equilibrium point for fuzzy cellular neural networks with delays and reaction-diffusion terms. These results extend and improve the earlier publications. Two examples are given to illustrate the efficiency of the obtained results.

  14. An Efficient Forward-Reverse EM Algorithm for Statistical Inference in Stochastic Reaction Networks

    KAUST Repository

    Bayer, Christian; Moraes, Alvaro; Tempone, Raul; Vilanova, Pedro

    2016-01-01

    In this work [1], we present an extension of the forward-reverse algorithm by Bayer and Schoenmakers [2] to the context of stochastic reaction networks (SRNs). We then apply this bridge-generation technique to the statistical inference problem

  15. Oxygen consumption through metabolism and photodynamic reactions in cells cultured on microbeads

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Schunck, T.; Poulet, P.

    2000-01-01

    Oxygen consumption by cultured cells, through metabolism and photosensitization reactions, has been calculated theoretically. From this result, we have derived the partial oxygen pressure P O 2 in the perfusion medium flowing across sensitized cultured cells during photodynamic experiments. The P O 2 variations in the perfusate during light irradiation are related to the rate of oxygen consumption through photoreactions, and to the number of cells killed per mole of oxygen consumed through metabolic processes. After irradiation, the reduced metabolic oxygen consumption yields information on the cell death rate, and on the photodynamic cell killing efficiency. The aim of this paper is to present an experimental set-up and the corresponding theoretical model that allows us to control the photodynamic efficiency for a given cell-sensitizer pair, under well defined and controlled conditions of irradiation and oxygen supply. To demonstrate the usefulness of the methodology described, CHO cells cultured on microbeads were sensitized with pheophorbide a and irradiated with different light fluence rates. The results obtained, i.e. oxygen consumption of about 0.1 μMs -1 m -3 under a light fluence rate of 1 W m -2 , 10 5 cells killed per mole of oxygen consumed and a decay rate of about 1 h -1 of living cells after irradiation, are in good agreement with the theoretical predictions and with previously published data. (author)

  16. Development and testing of a compartmentalized reaction network model for redox zones in contaminated aquifers

    Science.gov (United States)

    Abrams , Robert H.; Loague, Keith; Kent, Douglas B.

    1998-01-01

    The work reported here is the first part of a larger effort focused on efficient numerical simulation of redox zone development in contaminated aquifers. The sequential use of various electron acceptors, which is governed by the energy yield of each reaction, gives rise to redox zones. The large difference in energy yields between the various redox reactions leads to systems of equations that are extremely ill-conditioned. These equations are very difficult to solve, especially in the context of coupled fluid flow, solute transport, and geochemical simulations. We have developed a general, rational method to solve such systems where we focus on the dominant reactions, compartmentalizing them in a manner that is analogous to the redox zones that are often observed in the field. The compartmentalized approach allows us to easily solve a complex geochemical system as a function of time and energy yield, laying the foundation for our ongoing work in which we couple the reaction network, for the development of redox zones, to a model of subsurface fluid flow and solute transport. Our method (1) solves the numerical system without evoking a redox parameter, (2) improves the numerical stability of redox systems by choosing which compartment and thus which reaction network to use based upon the concentration ratios of key constituents, (3) simulates the development of redox zones as a function of time without the use of inhibition factors or switching functions, and (4) can reduce the number of transport equations that need to be solved in space and time. We show through the use of various model performance evaluation statistics that the appropriate compartment choice under different geochemical conditions leads to numerical solutions without significant error. The compartmentalized approach described here facilitates the next phase of this effort where we couple the redox zone reaction network to models of fluid flow and solute transport.

  17. Optimization Models for Reaction Networks: Information Divergence, Quadratic Programming and Kirchhoff’s Laws

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Julio Michael Stern

    2014-03-01

    Full Text Available This article presents a simple derivation of optimization models for reaction networks leading to a generalized form of the mass-action law, and compares the formal structure of Minimum Information Divergence, Quadratic Programming and Kirchhoff type network models. These optimization models are used in related articles to develop and illustrate the operation of ontology alignment algorithms and to discuss closely connected issues concerning the epistemological and statistical significance of sharp or precise hypotheses in empirical science.

  18. Passivity analysis for uncertain BAM neural networks with time delays and reaction-diffusions

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zhou, Jianping; Xu, Shengyuan; Shen, Hao; Zhang, Baoyong

    2013-08-01

    This article deals with the problem of passivity analysis for delayed reaction-diffusion bidirectional associative memory (BAM) neural networks with weight uncertainties. By using a new integral inequality, we first present a passivity condition for the nominal networks, and then extend the result to the case with linear fractional weight uncertainties. The proposed conditions are expressed in terms of linear matrix inequalities, and thus can be checked easily. Examples are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed results.

  19. Effects of Creatine Monohydrate Augmentation on Brain Metabolic and Network Outcome Measures in Women With Major Depressive Disorder.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Yoon, Sujung; Kim, Jieun E; Hwang, Jaeuk; Kim, Tae-Suk; Kang, Hee Jin; Namgung, Eun; Ban, Soonhyun; Oh, Subin; Yang, Jeongwon; Renshaw, Perry F; Lyoo, In Kyoon

    2016-09-15

    Creatine monohydrate (creatine) augmentation has the potential to accelerate the clinical responses to and enhance the overall efficacy of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor treatment in women with major depressive disorder (MDD). Although it has been suggested that creatine augmentation may involve the restoration of brain energy metabolism, the mechanisms underlying its antidepressant efficacy are unknown. In a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial, 52 women with MDD were assigned to receive either creatine augmentation or placebo augmentation of escitalopram; 34 subjects participated in multimodal neuroimaging assessments at baseline and week 8. Age-matched healthy women (n = 39) were also assessed twice at the same intervals. Metabolic and network outcomes were measured for changes in prefrontal N-acetylaspartate and changes in rich club hub connections of the structural brain network using proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy and diffusion tensor imaging, respectively. We found MDD-related metabolic and network dysfunction at baseline. Improvement in depressive symptoms was greater in patients receiving creatine augmentation relative to placebo augmentation. After 8 weeks of treatment, prefrontal N-acetylaspartate levels increased significantly in the creatine augmentation group compared with the placebo augmentation group. Increment in rich club hub connections was also greater in the creatine augmentation group than in the placebo augmentation group. N-acetylaspartate levels and rich club connections increased after creatine augmentation of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor treatment. Effects of creatine administration on brain energy metabolism and network organization may partly underlie its efficacy in treating women with MDD. Copyright © 2016 Society of Biological Psychiatry. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  20. FERN - a Java framework for stochastic simulation and evaluation of reaction networks.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Erhard, Florian; Friedel, Caroline C; Zimmer, Ralf

    2008-08-29

    Stochastic simulation can be used to illustrate the development of biological systems over time and the stochastic nature of these processes. Currently available programs for stochastic simulation, however, are limited in that they either a) do not provide the most efficient simulation algorithms and are difficult to extend, b) cannot be easily integrated into other applications or c) do not allow to monitor and intervene during the simulation process in an easy and intuitive way. Thus, in order to use stochastic simulation in innovative high-level modeling and analysis approaches more flexible tools are necessary. In this article, we present FERN (Framework for Evaluation of Reaction Networks), a Java framework for the efficient simulation of chemical reaction networks. FERN is subdivided into three layers for network representation, simulation and visualization of the simulation results each of which can be easily extended. It provides efficient and accurate state-of-the-art stochastic simulation algorithms for well-mixed chemical systems and a powerful observer system, which makes it possible to track and control the simulation progress on every level. To illustrate how FERN can be easily integrated into other systems biology applications, plugins to Cytoscape and CellDesigner are included. These plugins make it possible to run simulations and to observe the simulation progress in a reaction network in real-time from within the Cytoscape or CellDesigner environment. FERN addresses shortcomings of currently available stochastic simulation programs in several ways. First, it provides a broad range of efficient and accurate algorithms both for exact and approximate stochastic simulation and a simple interface for extending to new algorithms. FERN's implementations are considerably faster than the C implementations of gillespie2 or the Java implementations of ISBJava. Second, it can be used in a straightforward way both as a stand-alone program and within new

  1. Applicant reactions to social network web use in personnel selection and assessment

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    David Aguado

    2016-12-01

    Full Text Available Human Resource (HR professionals are increasingly using Social Networking Websites (SNWs for personnel recruitment and selection processes. However, evidence is required regarding their psychometric properties and their impact on applicant reactions. In this paper we present and discuss the results of exploring applicant reactions to either the use of a professional SNW (such as LinkedIn or a non-professional SNW (such as Facebook. A scale for assessing applicant reactions was applied to 124 professionals. The results showed more positive attitudes to the use of professional SNWs compared with non-professional SNWs. Both gender and age moderated these results, with females and young applicants having a less positive attitude than males and older participants towards the use of non-professional SNWs.

  2. MbT-Tool: An open-access tool based on Thermodynamic Electron Equivalents Model to obtain microbial-metabolic reactions to be used in biotechnological process.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Araujo, Pablo Granda; Gras, Anna; Ginovart, Marta

    2016-01-01

    Modelling cellular metabolism is a strategic factor in investigating microbial behaviour and interactions, especially for bio-technological processes. A key factor for modelling microbial activity is the calculation of nutrient amounts and products generated as a result of the microbial metabolism. Representing metabolic pathways through balanced reactions is a complex and time-consuming task for biologists, ecologists, modellers and engineers. A new computational tool to represent microbial pathways through microbial metabolic reactions (MMRs) using the approach of the Thermodynamic Electron Equivalents Model has been designed and implemented in the open-access framework NetLogo. This computational tool, called MbT-Tool (Metabolism based on Thermodynamics) can write MMRs for different microbial functional groups, such as aerobic heterotrophs, nitrifiers, denitrifiers, methanogens, sulphate reducers, sulphide oxidizers and fermenters. The MbT-Tool's code contains eighteen organic and twenty inorganic reduction-half-reactions, four N-sources (NH4 (+), NO3 (-), NO2 (-), N2) to biomass synthesis and twenty-four microbial empirical formulas, one of which can be determined by the user (CnHaObNc). MbT-Tool is an open-source program capable of writing MMRs based on thermodynamic concepts, which are applicable in a wide range of academic research interested in designing, optimizing and modelling microbial activity without any extensive chemical, microbiological and programing experience.

  3. Fluoroacetylcarnitine: metabolism and metabolic effects in mitochondria

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Bremer, J; Davis, E J

    1973-01-01

    The metabolism and metabolic effects of fluoroacetylcarnitine have been investigated. Carnitineacetyltransferase transfers the fluoro-acetyl group of fluoroacetylcarnitine nearly as rapidly to CoA as the acetyl group of acetylcarnitine. Fluorocitrate is then formed by citrate synthase, but this second reaction is relatively slow. The fluorocitrate formed intramitochondrially inhibits the metabolism of citrate. In heart and skeletal muscle mitochondria the accumulated citrate inhibits citrate synthesis and the ..beta..-oxidation of fatty acids. Free acetate is formed, presumably because accumulated acetyl-CoA is hydrolyzed. In liver mitochondria the accumulation of citrate leads to a relatively increased rate of ketogenesis. Increased ketogenesis is obtained also upon the addition of citrate to the reaction mixture.

  4. MetExploreViz: web component for interactive metabolic network visualization.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chazalviel, Maxime; Frainay, Clément; Poupin, Nathalie; Vinson, Florence; Merlet, Benjamin; Gloaguen, Yoann; Cottret, Ludovic; Jourdan, Fabien

    2017-09-15

    MetExploreViz is an open source web component that can be easily embedded in any web site. It provides features dedicated to the visualization of metabolic networks and pathways and thus offers a flexible solution to analyze omics data in a biochemical context. Documentation and link to GIT code repository (GPL 3.0 license)are available at this URL: http://metexplore.toulouse.inra.fr/metexploreViz/doc /. Tutorial is available at this URL. © The Author (2017). Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com

  5. Drift-Implicit Multi-Level Monte Carlo Tau-Leap Methods for Stochastic Reaction Networks

    KAUST Repository

    Ben Hammouda, Chiheb

    2015-01-01

    -space and deterministic ones. These stochastic models constitute the theory of stochastic reaction networks (SRNs). Furthermore, in some cases, the dynamics of fast and slow time scales can be well separated and this is characterized by what is called sti

  6. Ordinary differential equations and Boolean networks in application to modelling of 6-mercaptopurine metabolism.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lavrova, Anastasia I; Postnikov, Eugene B; Zyubin, Andrey Yu; Babak, Svetlana V

    2017-04-01

    We consider two approaches to modelling the cell metabolism of 6-mercaptopurine, one of the important chemotherapy drugs used for treating acute lymphocytic leukaemia: kinetic ordinary differential equations, and Boolean networks supplied with one controlling node, which takes continual values. We analyse their interplay with respect to taking into account ATP concentration as a key parameter of switching between different pathways. It is shown that the Boolean networks, which allow avoiding the complexity of general kinetic modelling, preserve the possibility of reproducing the principal switching mechanism.

  7. Complex networks principles, methods and applications

    CERN Document Server

    Latora, Vito; Russo, Giovanni

    2017-01-01

    Networks constitute the backbone of complex systems, from the human brain to computer communications, transport infrastructures to online social systems and metabolic reactions to financial markets. Characterising their structure improves our understanding of the physical, biological, economic and social phenomena that shape our world. Rigorous and thorough, this textbook presents a detailed overview of the new theory and methods of network science. Covering algorithms for graph exploration, node ranking and network generation, among the others, the book allows students to experiment with network models and real-world data sets, providing them with a deep understanding of the basics of network theory and its practical applications. Systems of growing complexity are examined in detail, challenging students to increase their level of skill. An engaging presentation of the important principles of network science makes this the perfect reference for researchers and undergraduate and graduate students in physics, ...

  8. Identification of Metabolic Pathways Essential for Fitness of Salmonella Typhimurium In Vivo

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Jelsbak, Lotte; Hartman, Hassan; Schroll, Casper

    2014-01-01

    Bacterial infections remain a threat to human and animal health worldwide, and there is an urgent need to find novel targets for intervention. In the current study we used a computer model of the metabolic network of Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium and identified pairs of reactions (cut s...

  9. Global exponential stability for reaction-diffusion recurrent neural networks with multiple time varying delays

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Lou, X.; Cui, B.

    2008-01-01

    In this paper we consider the problem of exponential stability for recurrent neural networks with multiple time varying delays and reaction-diffusion terms. The activation functions are supposed to be bounded and globally Lipschitz continuous. By means of Lyapunov functional, sufficient conditions are derived, which guarantee global exponential stability of the delayed neural network. Finally, a numerical example is given to show the correctness of our analysis. (author)

  10. Neural network approach to time-dependent dividing surfaces in classical reaction dynamics

    Science.gov (United States)

    Schraft, Philippe; Junginger, Andrej; Feldmaier, Matthias; Bardakcioglu, Robin; Main, Jörg; Wunner, Günter; Hernandez, Rigoberto

    2018-04-01

    In a dynamical system, the transition between reactants and products is typically mediated by an energy barrier whose properties determine the corresponding pathways and rates. The latter is the flux through a dividing surface (DS) between the two corresponding regions, and it is exact only if it is free of recrossings. For time-independent barriers, the DS can be attached to the top of the corresponding saddle point of the potential energy surface, and in time-dependent systems, the DS is a moving object. The precise determination of these direct reaction rates, e.g., using transition state theory, requires the actual construction of a DS for a given saddle geometry, which is in general a demanding methodical and computational task, especially in high-dimensional systems. In this paper, we demonstrate how such time-dependent, global, and recrossing-free DSs can be constructed using neural networks. In our approach, the neural network uses the bath coordinates and time as input, and it is trained in a way that its output provides the position of the DS along the reaction coordinate. An advantage of this procedure is that, once the neural network is trained, the complete information about the dynamical phase space separation is stored in the network's parameters, and a precise distinction between reactants and products can be made for all possible system configurations, all times, and with little computational effort. We demonstrate this general method for two- and three-dimensional systems and explain its straightforward extension to even more degrees of freedom.

  11. Habitat variability does not generally promote metabolic network modularity in flies and mammals.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Takemoto, Kazuhiro

    2016-01-01

    The evolution of species habitat range is an important topic over a wide range of research fields. In higher organisms, habitat range evolution is generally associated with genetic events such as gene duplication. However, the specific factors that determine habitat variability remain unclear at higher levels of biological organization (e.g., biochemical networks). One widely accepted hypothesis developed from both theoretical and empirical analyses is that habitat variability promotes network modularity; however, this relationship has not yet been directly tested in higher organisms. Therefore, I investigated the relationship between habitat variability and metabolic network modularity using compound and enzymatic networks in flies and mammals. Contrary to expectation, there was no clear positive correlation between habitat variability and network modularity. As an exception, the network modularity increased with habitat variability in the enzymatic networks of flies. However, the observed association was likely an artifact, and the frequency of gene duplication appears to be the main factor contributing to network modularity. These findings raise the question of whether or not there is a general mechanism for habitat range expansion at a higher level (i.e., above the gene scale). This study suggests that the currently widely accepted hypothesis for habitat variability should be reconsidered. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

  12. Semi-automated curation of metabolic models via flux balance analysis: a case study with Mycoplasma gallisepticum.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Eddy J Bautista

    Full Text Available Primarily used for metabolic engineering and synthetic biology, genome-scale metabolic modeling shows tremendous potential as a tool for fundamental research and curation of metabolism. Through a novel integration of flux balance analysis and genetic algorithms, a strategy to curate metabolic networks and facilitate identification of metabolic pathways that may not be directly inferable solely from genome annotation was developed. Specifically, metabolites involved in unknown reactions can be determined, and potentially erroneous pathways can be identified. The procedure developed allows for new fundamental insight into metabolism, as well as acting as a semi-automated curation methodology for genome-scale metabolic modeling. To validate the methodology, a genome-scale metabolic model for the bacterium Mycoplasma gallisepticum was created. Several reactions not predicted by the genome annotation were postulated and validated via the literature. The model predicted an average growth rate of 0.358±0.12[Formula: see text], closely matching the experimentally determined growth rate of M. gallisepticum of 0.244±0.03[Formula: see text]. This work presents a powerful algorithm for facilitating the identification and curation of previously known and new metabolic pathways, as well as presenting the first genome-scale reconstruction of M. gallisepticum.

  13. Multiple Substrate Usage of Coxiella burnetii to Feed a Bipartite Metabolic Network

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Ina Häuslein

    2017-06-01

    Full Text Available The human pathogen Coxiella burnetii causes Q-fever and is classified as a category B bio-weapon. Exploiting the development of the axenic growth medium ACCM-2, we have now used 13C-labeling experiments and isotopolog profiling to investigate the highly diverse metabolic network of C. burnetii. To this aim, C. burnetii RSA 439 NMII was cultured in ACCM-2 containing 5 mM of either [U-13C3]serine, [U-13C6]glucose, or [U-13C3]glycerol until the late-logarithmic phase. GC/MS-based isotopolog profiling of protein-derived amino acids, methanol-soluble polar metabolites, fatty acids, and cell wall components (e.g., diaminopimelate and sugars from the labeled bacteria revealed differential incorporation rates and isotopolog profiles. These data served to decipher the diverse usages of the labeled substrates and the relative carbon fluxes into the core metabolism of the pathogen. Whereas, de novo biosynthesis from any of these substrates could not be found for histidine, isoleucine, leucine, lysine, phenylalanine, proline and valine, the other amino acids and metabolites under study acquired 13C-label at specific rates depending on the nature of the tracer compound. Glucose was directly used for cell wall biosynthesis, but was also converted into pyruvate (and its downstream metabolites through the glycolytic pathway or into erythrose 4-phosphate (e.g., for the biosynthesis of tyrosine via the non-oxidative pentose phosphate pathway. Glycerol efficiently served as a gluconeogenetic substrate and could also be used via phosphoenolpyruvate and diaminopimelate as a major carbon source for cell wall biosynthesis. In contrast, exogenous serine was mainly utilized in downstream metabolic processes, e.g., via acetyl-CoA in a complete citrate cycle with fluxes in the oxidative direction and as a carbon feed for fatty acid biosynthesis. In summary, the data reflect multiple and differential substrate usages by C. burnetii in a bipartite-type metabolic network

  14. Modular rate laws for enzymatic reactions: thermodynamics, elasticities and implementation.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Liebermeister, Wolfram; Uhlendorf, Jannis; Klipp, Edda

    2010-06-15

    Standard rate laws are a key requisite for systematically turning metabolic networks into kinetic models. They should provide simple, general and biochemically plausible formulae for reaction velocities and reaction elasticities. At the same time, they need to respect thermodynamic relations between the kinetic constants and the metabolic fluxes and concentrations. We present a family of reversible rate laws for reactions with arbitrary stoichiometries and various types of regulation, including mass-action, Michaelis-Menten and uni-uni reversible Hill kinetics as special cases. With a thermodynamically safe parameterization of these rate laws, parameter sets obtained by model fitting, sampling or optimization are guaranteed to lead to consistent chemical equilibrium states. A reformulation using saturation values yields simple formulae for rates and elasticities, which can be easily adjusted to the given stationary flux distributions. Furthermore, this formulation highlights the role of chemical potential differences as thermodynamic driving forces. We compare the modular rate laws to the thermodynamic-kinetic modelling formalism and discuss a simplified rate law in which the reaction rate directly depends on the reaction affinity. For automatic handling of modular rate laws, we propose a standard syntax and semantic annotations for the Systems Biology Markup Language. An online tool for inserting the rate laws into SBML models is freely available at www.semanticsbml.org. Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.

  15. Reaction Norms in Natural Conditions: How Does Metabolic Performance Respond to Weather Variations in a Small Endotherm Facing Cold Environments?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Petit, Magali; Vézina, François

    2014-01-01

    Reaction norms reflect an organisms' capacity to adjust its phenotype to the environment and allows for identifying trait values associated with physiological limits. However, reaction norms of physiological parameters are mostly unknown for endotherms living in natural conditions. Black-capped chickadees (Poecile atricapillus) increase their metabolic performance during winter acclimatization and are thus good model to measure reaction norms in the wild. We repeatedly measured basal (BMR) and summit (Msum) metabolism in chickadees to characterize, for the first time in a free-living endotherm, reaction norms of these parameters across the natural range of weather variation. BMR varied between individuals and was weakly and negatively related to minimal temperature. Msum varied with minimal temperature following a Z-shape curve, increasing linearly between 24°C and −10°C, and changed with absolute humidity following a U-shape relationship. These results suggest that thermal exchanges with the environment have minimal effects on maintenance costs, which may be individual-dependent, while thermogenic capacity is responding to body heat loss. Our results suggest also that BMR and Msum respond to different and likely independent constraints. PMID:25426860

  16. Multi-omic network-based interrogation of rat liver metabolism following gastric bypass surgery featuring SWATH proteomics.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sridharan, Gautham Vivek; D'Alessandro, Matthew; Bale, Shyam Sundhar; Bhagat, Vicky; Gagnon, Hugo; Asara, John M; Uygun, Korkut; Yarmush, Martin L; Saeidi, Nima

    2017-09-01

    Morbidly obese patients often elect for Roux-en-Y gastric bypass (RYGB), a form of bariatric surgery that triggers a remarkable 30% reduction in excess body weight and reversal of insulin resistance for those who are type II diabetic. A more complete understanding of the underlying molecular mechanisms that drive the complex metabolic reprogramming post-RYGB could lead to innovative non-invasive therapeutics that mimic the beneficial effects of the surgery, namely weight loss, achievement of glycemic control, or reversal of non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH). To facilitate these discoveries, we hereby demonstrate the first multi-omic interrogation of a rodent RYGB model to reveal tissue-specific pathway modules implicated in the control of body weight regulation and energy homeostasis. In this study, we focus on and evaluate liver metabolism three months following RYGB in rats using both SWATH proteomics, a burgeoning label free approach using high resolution mass spectrometry to quantify protein levels in biological samples, as well as MRM metabolomics. The SWATH analysis enabled the quantification of 1378 proteins in liver tissue extracts, of which we report the significant down-regulation of Thrsp and Acot13 in RYGB as putative targets of lipid metabolism for weight loss. Furthermore, we develop a computational graph-based metabolic network module detection algorithm for the discovery of non-canonical pathways, or sub-networks, enriched with significantly elevated or depleted metabolites and proteins in RYGB-treated rat livers. The analysis revealed a network connection between the depleted protein Baat and the depleted metabolite taurine, corroborating the clinical observation that taurine-conjugated bile acid levels are perturbed post-RYGB.

  17. The RAVEN Toolbox and Its Use for Generating a Genome-scale Metabolic Model for Penicillium chrysogenum

    Science.gov (United States)

    Agren, Rasmus; Liu, Liming; Shoaie, Saeed; Vongsangnak, Wanwipa; Nookaew, Intawat; Nielsen, Jens

    2013-01-01

    We present the RAVEN (Reconstruction, Analysis and Visualization of Metabolic Networks) Toolbox: a software suite that allows for semi-automated reconstruction of genome-scale models. It makes use of published models and/or the KEGG database, coupled with extensive gap-filling and quality control features. The software suite also contains methods for visualizing simulation results and omics data, as well as a range of methods for performing simulations and analyzing the results. The software is a useful tool for system-wide data analysis in a metabolic context and for streamlined reconstruction of metabolic networks based on protein homology. The RAVEN Toolbox workflow was applied in order to reconstruct a genome-scale metabolic model for the important microbial cell factory Penicillium chrysogenum Wisconsin54-1255. The model was validated in a bibliomic study of in total 440 references, and it comprises 1471 unique biochemical reactions and 1006 ORFs. It was then used to study the roles of ATP and NADPH in the biosynthesis of penicillin, and to identify potential metabolic engineering targets for maximization of penicillin production. PMID:23555215

  18. An Efficient Forward-Reverse EM Algorithm for Statistical Inference in Stochastic Reaction Networks

    KAUST Repository

    Bayer, Christian

    2016-01-06

    In this work [1], we present an extension of the forward-reverse algorithm by Bayer and Schoenmakers [2] to the context of stochastic reaction networks (SRNs). We then apply this bridge-generation technique to the statistical inference problem of approximating the reaction coefficients based on discretely observed data. To this end, we introduce an efficient two-phase algorithm in which the first phase is deterministic and it is intended to provide a starting point for the second phase which is the Monte Carlo EM Algorithm.

  19. Flow network QSAR for the prediction of physicochemical properties by mapping an electrical resistance network onto a chemical reaction poset.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ivanciuc, Ovidiu; Ivanciuc, Teodora; Klein, Douglas J

    2013-06-01

    Usual quantitative structure-activity relationship (QSAR) models are computed from unstructured input data, by using a vector of molecular descriptors for each chemical in the dataset. Another alternative is to consider the structural relationships between the chemical structures, such as molecular similarity, presence of certain substructures, or chemical transformations between compounds. We defined a class of network-QSAR models based on molecular networks induced by a sequence of substitution reactions on a chemical structure that generates a partially ordered set (or poset) oriented graph that may be used to predict various molecular properties with quantitative superstructure-activity relationships (QSSAR). The network-QSAR interpolation models defined on poset graphs, namely average poset, cluster expansion, and spline poset, were tested with success for the prediction of several physicochemical properties for diverse chemicals. We introduce the flow network QSAR, a new poset regression model in which the dataset of chemicals, represented as a reaction poset, is transformed into an oriented network of electrical resistances in which the current flow results in a potential at each node. The molecular property considered in the QSSAR model is represented as the electrical potential, and the value of this potential at a particular node is determined by the electrical resistances assigned to each edge and by a system of batteries. Each node with a known value for the molecular property is attached to a battery that sets the potential on that node to the value of the respective molecular property, and no external battery is attached to nodes from the prediction set, representing chemicals for which the values of the molecular property are not known or are intended to be predicted. The flow network QSAR algorithm determines the values of the molecular property for the prediction set of molecules by applying Ohm's law and Kirchhoff's current law to the poset

  20. Report on the IAEA technical meeting on network of nuclear reaction data centres

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Schwerer, O [International Atomic Energy Agency, Nuclear Data Section, Vienna (Austria); Henriksson, H [NEA Data Bank, Issy-les-Moulineaux (France)

    2005-01-15

    This report summarizes the IAEA Technical Meeting on the Network of Nuclear Reaction Data Centres (biennial Data Centre Heads Meeting), held at the Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, NY, USA from 4-7 October 2004. The meeting was attended by 20 participants from 11 co-operating data centres of six Member States and two International Organizations. The report contains a summary of the meeting, the conclusions and actions, status reports of the participating data centres, and a revised technical protocol for the cooperation of the network. (author)

  1. Report on the IAEA technical meeting on network of nuclear reaction data centres

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Schwerer, O.; Henriksson, H.

    2005-01-01

    This report summarizes the IAEA Technical Meeting on the Network of Nuclear Reaction Data Centres (biennial Data Centre Heads Meeting), held at the Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, NY, USA from 4-7 October 2004. The meeting was attended by 20 participants from 11 co-operating data centres of six Member States and two International Organizations. The report contains a summary of the meeting, the conclusions and actions, status reports of the participating data centres, and a revised technical protocol for the cooperation of the network. (author)

  2. Insights on the evolution of metabolic networks of unicellular translationally biased organisms from transcriptomic data and sequence analysis.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Carbone, Alessandra; Madden, Richard

    2005-10-01

    Codon bias is related to metabolic functions in translationally biased organisms, and two facts are argued about. First, genes with high codon bias describe in meaningful ways the metabolic characteristics of the organism; important metabolic pathways corresponding to crucial characteristics of the lifestyle of an organism, such as photosynthesis, nitrification, anaerobic versus aerobic respiration, sulfate reduction, methanogenesis, and others, happen to involve especially biased genes. Second, gene transcriptional levels of sets of experiments representing a significant variation of biological conditions strikingly confirm, in the case of Saccharomyces cerevisiae, that metabolic preferences are detectable by purely statistical analysis: the high metabolic activity of yeast during fermentation is encoded in the high bias of enzymes involved in the associated pathways, suggesting that this genome was affected by a strong evolutionary pressure that favored a predominantly fermentative metabolism of yeast in the wild. The ensemble of metabolic pathways involving enzymes with high codon bias is rather well defined and remains consistent across many species, even those that have not been considered as translationally biased, such as Helicobacter pylori, for instance, reveal some weak form of translational bias for this genome. We provide numerical evidence, supported by experimental data, of these facts and conclude that the metabolic networks of translationally biased genomes, observable today as projections of eons of evolutionary pressure, can be analyzed numerically and predictions of the role of specific pathways during evolution can be derived. The new concepts of Comparative Pathway Index, used to compare organisms with respect to their metabolic networks, and Evolutionary Pathway Index, used to detect evolutionarily meaningful bias in the genetic code from transcriptional data, are introduced.

  3. MbT-Tool: An open-access tool based on Thermodynamic Electron Equivalents Model to obtain microbial-metabolic reactions to be used in biotechnological process

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Pablo Araujo Granda

    2016-01-01

    Full Text Available Modelling cellular metabolism is a strategic factor in investigating microbial behaviour and interactions, especially for bio-technological processes. A key factor for modelling microbial activity is the calculation of nutrient amounts and products generated as a result of the microbial metabolism. Representing metabolic pathways through balanced reactions is a complex and time-consuming task for biologists, ecologists, modellers and engineers. A new computational tool to represent microbial pathways through microbial metabolic reactions (MMRs using the approach of the Thermodynamic Electron Equivalents Model has been designed and implemented in the open-access framework NetLogo. This computational tool, called MbT-Tool (Metabolism based on Thermodynamics can write MMRs for different microbial functional groups, such as aerobic heterotrophs, nitrifiers, denitrifiers, methanogens, sulphate reducers, sulphide oxidizers and fermenters. The MbT-Tool's code contains eighteen organic and twenty inorganic reduction-half-reactions, four N-sources (NH4+, NO3−, NO2−, N2 to biomass synthesis and twenty-four microbial empirical formulas, one of which can be determined by the user (CnHaObNc. MbT-Tool is an open-source program capable of writing MMRs based on thermodynamic concepts, which are applicable in a wide range of academic research interested in designing, optimizing and modelling microbial activity without any extensive chemical, microbiological and programing experience.

  4. Deciphering Fur transcriptional regulatory network highlights its complex role beyond iron metabolism in Escherichia coli

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Seo, Sang Woo; Kim, Donghyuk; Latif, Haythem

    2014-01-01

    The ferric uptake regulator (Fur) plays a critical role in the transcriptional regulation of iron metabolism. However, the full regulatory potential of Fur remains undefined. Here we comprehensively reconstruct the Fur transcriptional regulatory network in Escherichia coli K-12 MG1655 in response...

  5. Brain networks predict metabolism, diagnosis and prognosis at the bedside in disorders of consciousness.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chennu, Srivas; Annen, Jitka; Wannez, Sarah; Thibaut, Aurore; Chatelle, Camille; Cassol, Helena; Martens, Géraldine; Schnakers, Caroline; Gosseries, Olivia; Menon, David; Laureys, Steven

    2017-08-01

    Recent advances in functional neuroimaging have demonstrated novel potential for informing diagnosis and prognosis in the unresponsive wakeful syndrome and minimally conscious states. However, these technologies come with considerable expense and difficulty, limiting the possibility of wider clinical application in patients. Here, we show that high density electroencephalography, collected from 104 patients measured at rest, can provide valuable information about brain connectivity that correlates with behaviour and functional neuroimaging. Using graph theory, we visualize and quantify spectral connectivity estimated from electroencephalography as a dense brain network. Our findings demonstrate that key quantitative metrics of these networks correlate with the continuum of behavioural recovery in patients, ranging from those diagnosed as unresponsive, through those who have emerged from minimally conscious, to the fully conscious locked-in syndrome. In particular, a network metric indexing the presence of densely interconnected central hubs of connectivity discriminated behavioural consciousness with accuracy comparable to that achieved by expert assessment with positron emission tomography. We also show that this metric correlates strongly with brain metabolism. Further, with classification analysis, we predict the behavioural diagnosis, brain metabolism and 1-year clinical outcome of individual patients. Finally, we demonstrate that assessments of brain networks show robust connectivity in patients diagnosed as unresponsive by clinical consensus, but later rediagnosed as minimally conscious with the Coma Recovery Scale-Revised. Classification analysis of their brain network identified each of these misdiagnosed patients as minimally conscious, corroborating their behavioural diagnoses. If deployed at the bedside in the clinical context, such network measurements could complement systematic behavioural assessment and help reduce the high misdiagnosis rate reported

  6. Convergent evolution of modularity in metabolic networks through different community structures

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Zhou Wanding

    2012-09-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background It has been reported that the modularity of metabolic networks of bacteria is closely related to the variability of their living habitats. However, given the dependency of the modularity score on the community structure, it remains unknown whether organisms achieve certain modularity via similar or different community structures. Results In this work, we studied the relationship between similarities in modularity scores and similarities in community structures of the metabolic networks of 1021 species. Both similarities are then compared against the genetic distances. We revisited the association between modularity and variability of the microbial living environments and extended the analysis to other aspects of their life style such as temperature and oxygen requirements. We also tested both topological and biological intuition of the community structures identified and investigated the extent of their conservation with respect to the taxomony. Conclusions We find that similar modularities are realized by different community structures. We find that such convergent evolution of modularity is closely associated with the number of (distinct enzymes in the organism’s metabolome, a consequence of different life styles of the species. We find that the order of modularity is the same as the order of the number of the enzymes under the classification based on the temperature preference but not on the oxygen requirement. Besides, inspection of modularity-based communities reveals that these communities are graph-theoretically meaningful yet not reflective of specific biological functions. From an evolutionary perspective, we find that the community structures are conserved only at the level of kingdoms. Our results call for more investigation into the interplay between evolution and modularity: how evolution shapes modularity, and how modularity affects evolution (mainly in terms of fitness and evolvability. Further, our results

  7. Convergent evolution of modularity in metabolic networks through different community structures.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zhou, Wanding; Nakhleh, Luay

    2012-09-14

    It has been reported that the modularity of metabolic networks of bacteria is closely related to the variability of their living habitats. However, given the dependency of the modularity score on the community structure, it remains unknown whether organisms achieve certain modularity via similar or different community structures. In this work, we studied the relationship between similarities in modularity scores and similarities in community structures of the metabolic networks of 1021 species. Both similarities are then compared against the genetic distances. We revisited the association between modularity and variability of the microbial living environments and extended the analysis to other aspects of their life style such as temperature and oxygen requirements. We also tested both topological and biological intuition of the community structures identified and investigated the extent of their conservation with respect to the taxonomy. We find that similar modularities are realized by different community structures. We find that such convergent evolution of modularity is closely associated with the number of (distinct) enzymes in the organism's metabolome, a consequence of different life styles of the species. We find that the order of modularity is the same as the order of the number of the enzymes under the classification based on the temperature preference but not on the oxygen requirement. Besides, inspection of modularity-based communities reveals that these communities are graph-theoretically meaningful yet not reflective of specific biological functions. From an evolutionary perspective, we find that the community structures are conserved only at the level of kingdoms. Our results call for more investigation into the interplay between evolution and modularity: how evolution shapes modularity, and how modularity affects evolution (mainly in terms of fitness and evolvability). Further, our results call for exploring new measures of modularity and network

  8. Effects of network dissolution changes on pore-to-core upscaled reaction rates for kaolinite and anorthite reactions under acidic conditions

    KAUST Repository

    Kim, Daesang

    2013-11-01

    We have extended reactive flow simulation in pore-network models to include geometric changes in the medium from dissolution effects. These effects include changes in pore volume and reactive surface area, as well as topological changes that open new connections. The computed changes were based upon a mineral map from an X-ray computed tomography image of a sandstone core. We studied the effect of these changes on upscaled (pore-scale to core-scale) reaction rates and compared against the predictions of a continuum model. Specifically, we modeled anorthite and kaolinite reactions under acidic flow conditions during which the anorthite reactions remain far from equilibrium (dissolution only), while the kaolinite reactions can be near-equilibrium. Under dissolution changes, core-scale reaction rates continuously and nonlinearly evolved in time. At higher injection rates, agreement with predictions of the continuum model degraded significantly. For the far-from-equilibrium reaction, our results indicate that the ability to correctly capture the heterogeneity in dissolution changes in the reactive mineral surface area is critical to accurately predict upscaled reaction rates. For the near-equilibrium reaction, the ability to correctly capture the heterogeneity in the saturation state remains critical. Inclusion of a Nernst-Planck term to ensure neutral ionic currents under differential diffusion resulted in at most a 9% correction in upscaled rates.

  9. Dynamical Behaviors of Stochastic Reaction-Diffusion Cohen-Grossberg Neural Networks with Delays

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Li Wan

    2012-01-01

    Full Text Available This paper investigates dynamical behaviors of stochastic Cohen-Grossberg neural network with delays and reaction diffusion. By employing Lyapunov method, Poincaré inequality and matrix technique, some sufficient criteria on ultimate boundedness, weak attractor, and asymptotic stability are obtained. Finally, a numerical example is given to illustrate the correctness and effectiveness of our theoretical results.

  10. Body shape shifting during growth permits tests that distinguish between competing geometric theories of metabolic scaling

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Hirst, Andrew G.; Glazier, Douglas S.; Atkinson, David

    2014-01-01

    Metabolism fuels all of life’s activities, from biochemical reactions to ecological interactions. According to two intensely debated theories, body size affects metabolism via geometrical influences on the transport of resources and wastes. However, these theories differ crucially in whether...... the size dependence of metabolism is derived from material transport across external surfaces, or through internal resource-transport networks. We show that when body shape changes during growth, these models make opposing predictions. These models are tested using pelagic invertebrates, because...... these animals exhibit highly variable intraspecific scaling relationships for metabolic rate and body shape. Metabolic scaling slopes of diverse integument-breathing species were significantly positively correlated with degree of body flattening or elongation during ontogeny, as expected from surface area...

  11. Redox regulation and pro-oxidant reactions in the physiology of circadian systems.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Méndez, Isabel; Vázquez-Martínez, Olivia; Hernández-Muñoz, Rolando; Valente-Godínez, Héctor; Díaz-Muñoz, Mauricio

    2016-05-01

    Rhythms of approximately 24 h are pervasive in most organisms and are known as circadian. There is a molecular circadian clock in each cell sustained by a feedback system of interconnected "clock" genes and transcription factors. In mammals, the timing system is formed by a central pacemaker, the suprachiasmatic nucleus, in coordination with a collection of peripheral oscillators. Recently, an extensive interconnection has been recognized between the molecular circadian clock and the set of biochemical pathways that underlie the bioenergetics of the cell. A principle regulator of metabolic networks is the flow of electrons between electron donors and acceptors. The concomitant reduction and oxidation (redox) reactions directly influence the balance between anabolic and catabolic processes. This review summarizes and discusses recent findings concerning the mutual and dynamic interactions between the molecular circadian clock, redox reactions, and redox signaling. The scope includes the regulatory role played by redox coenzymes (NAD(P)+/NAD(P)H, GSH/GSSG), reactive oxygen species (superoxide anion, hydrogen peroxide), antioxidants (melatonin), and physiological events that modulate the redox state (feeding condition, circadian rhythms) in determining the timing capacity of the molecular circadian clock. In addition, we discuss a purely metabolic circadian clock, which is based on the redox enzymes known as peroxiredoxins and is present in mammalian red blood cells and in other biological systems. Both the timing system and the metabolic network are key to a better understanding of widespread pathological conditions such as the metabolic syndrome, obesity, and diabetes. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. and Société Française de Biochimie et Biologie Moléculaire (SFBBM). All rights reserved.

  12. Linking high-resolution metabolic flux phenotypes and transcriptional regulation in yeast modulated by the global regulator Gcn4p

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Moxley, Joel F.; Jewett, Michael Christopher; Antoniewicz, Maciek R.

    2009-01-01

    . However, the potential of systems biology approaches is limited by difficulties in integrating metabolic measurements across the functional levels of the cell despite their being most closely linked to cellular phenotype. To address this limitation, we developed a model-based approach to correlate m......RNA and metabolic flux data that combines information from both interaction network models and flux determination models. We started by quantifying 5,764 mRNAs, 54 metabolites, and 83 experimental C-13-based reaction fluxes in continuous cultures of yeast under stress in the absence or presence of global regulator...... of metabolic flux (i.e., use of different reaction pathways) by transcriptional regulation and metabolite interaction density (i.e., level of pairwise metabolite-protein interactions) as a key biosynthetic control determinant. Furthermore, this model predicted flux rewiring in studies of follow...

  13. Metabolic network reconstruction and genome-scale model of butanol-producing strain Clostridium beijerinckii NCIMB 8052

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Kim Pan-Jun

    2011-08-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background Solventogenic clostridia offer a sustainable alternative to petroleum-based production of butanol--an important chemical feedstock and potential fuel additive or replacement. C. beijerinckii is an attractive microorganism for strain design to improve butanol production because it (i naturally produces the highest recorded butanol concentrations as a byproduct of fermentation; and (ii can co-ferment pentose and hexose sugars (the primary products from lignocellulosic hydrolysis. Interrogating C. beijerinckii metabolism from a systems viewpoint using constraint-based modeling allows for simulation of the global effect of genetic modifications. Results We present the first genome-scale metabolic model (iCM925 for C. beijerinckii, containing 925 genes, 938 reactions, and 881 metabolites. To build the model we employed a semi-automated procedure that integrated genome annotation information from KEGG, BioCyc, and The SEED, and utilized computational algorithms with manual curation to improve model completeness. Interestingly, we found only a 34% overlap in reactions collected from the three databases--highlighting the importance of evaluating the predictive accuracy of the resulting genome-scale model. To validate iCM925, we conducted fermentation experiments using the NCIMB 8052 strain, and evaluated the ability of the model to simulate measured substrate uptake and product production rates. Experimentally observed fermentation profiles were found to lie within the solution space of the model; however, under an optimal growth objective, additional constraints were needed to reproduce the observed profiles--suggesting the existence of selective pressures other than optimal growth. Notably, a significantly enriched fraction of actively utilized reactions in simulations--constrained to reflect experimental rates--originated from the set of reactions that overlapped between all three databases (P = 3.52 × 10-9, Fisher's exact test

  14. The Adaptive QSE-reduced Nuclear Reaction Network for Silicon Burning

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Parete-Koon, Suzanne; Hix, William Raphael; Thielemann, Friedrich-Karl W.

    2008-01-01

    The nuclei of the 'iron peak' are formed in massive stars shortly before core collapse and during their supernova outbursts as well as during thermonuclear supernovae. Complete and incomplete silicon burning during these events are responsible for the production of a wide range of nuclei with atomic mass numbers from 28 to 64. Because of the large number of nuclei involved, accurate modeling of silicon burning is computationally expensive. However, examination of the physics of silicon burning has revealed that the nuclear evolution is dominated by large groups of nuclei in mutual equilibrium. We present an improvement on our hybrid equilibrium-network scheme which takes advantage of this quasi-equilibrium in order to reduce the number of independent variables calculated. Because the size and membership of these groups vary as the temperature, density and electron faction change, achieving maximal efficiency requires dynamic adjustment of group number and membership. Toward this end, we are implementing a scheme beginning with 2 QSE groups at appropriately high temperature, then progressing through, 3 and 3* group stages (with successively more independent variables) as temperature declines. This combination allows accurate prediction of the nuclear abundance evolution, deleptonization and energy generation at a further reduced computational cost when compared to a conventional nuclear reaction network or our previous 3 fixed group QSE-reduced network. During silicon burning, the resultant QSE-reduced network is up to 20 times faster than the full network it replaces without significant loss of accuracy. These reductions in computational cost and the number of species evolved make QSE-reduced networks well suited for inclusion within hydrodynamic simulations, particularly in multi-dimensional applications

  15. An efficient forward-reverse expectation-maximization algorithm for statistical inference in stochastic reaction networks

    KAUST Repository

    Vilanova, Pedro

    2016-01-01

    reaction networks (SRNs). We apply this stochastic representation to the computation of efficient approximations of expected values of functionals of SRN bridges, i.e., SRNs conditional on their values in the extremes of given time-intervals. We then employ

  16. Elucidation of Diels-Alder Reaction Network of 2,5-Dimethylfuran and Ethylene on HY Zeolite Catalyst

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Do, Phuong T. M. [Univ. of Delaware, Newark, DE (United States); McAtee, Jesse R. [Univ. of Delaware, Newark, DE (United States); Watson, Donald A. [Univ. of Delaware, Newark, DE (United States); Lobo, Raul F. [Univ. of Delaware, Newark, DE (United States)

    2012-12-12

    The reaction of 2,5-dimethylfuran and ethylene to produce p-xylene represents a potentially important route for the conversion of biomass to high-value organic chemicals. Current preparation methods suffer from low selectivity and produce a number of byproducts. Using modern separation and analytical techniques, the structures of many of the byproducts produced in this reaction when HY zeolite is employed as a catalyst have been identified. From these data, a detailed reaction network is proposed, demonstrating that hydrolysis and electrophilic alkylation reactions compete with the desired Diels–Alder/dehydration sequence. This information will allow the rational identification of more selective catalysts and more selective reaction conditions.

  17. Limits for Stochastic Reaction Networks

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Cappelletti, Daniele

    Reaction systems have been introduced in the 70s to model biochemical systems. Nowadays their range of applications has increased and they are fruitfully used in dierent elds. The concept is simple: some chemical species react, the set of chemical reactions form a graph and a rate function...... is associated with each reaction. Such functions describe the speed of the dierent reactions, or their propensities. Two modelling regimes are then available: the evolution of the dierent species concentrations can be deterministically modelled through a system of ODE, while the counts of the dierent species...... at a certain time are stochastically modelled by means of a continuous-time Markov chain. Our work concerns primarily stochastic reaction systems, and their asymptotic properties. In Paper I, we consider a reaction system with intermediate species, i.e. species that are produced and fast degraded along a path...

  18. Constraint-based model of Shewanella oneidensis MR-1 metabolism: a tool for data analysis and hypothesis generation.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Grigoriy E Pinchuk

    2010-06-01

    Full Text Available Shewanellae are gram-negative facultatively anaerobic metal-reducing bacteria commonly found in chemically (i.e., redox stratified environments. Occupying such niches requires the ability to rapidly acclimate to changes in electron donor/acceptor type and availability; hence, the ability to compete and thrive in such environments must ultimately be reflected in the organization and utilization of electron transfer networks, as well as central and peripheral carbon metabolism. To understand how Shewanella oneidensis MR-1 utilizes its resources, the metabolic network was reconstructed. The resulting network consists of 774 reactions, 783 genes, and 634 unique metabolites and contains biosynthesis pathways for all cell constituents. Using constraint-based modeling, we investigated aerobic growth of S. oneidensis MR-1 on numerous carbon sources. To achieve this, we (i used experimental data to formulate a biomass equation and estimate cellular ATP requirements, (ii developed an approach to identify cycles (such as futile cycles and circulations, (iii classified how reaction usage affects cellular growth, (iv predicted cellular biomass yields on different carbon sources and compared model predictions to experimental measurements, and (v used experimental results to refine metabolic fluxes for growth on lactate. The results revealed that aerobic lactate-grown cells of S. oneidensis MR-1 used less efficient enzymes to couple electron transport to proton motive force generation, and possibly operated at least one futile cycle involving malic enzymes. Several examples are provided whereby model predictions were validated by experimental data, in particular the role of serine hydroxymethyltransferase and glycine cleavage system in the metabolism of one-carbon units, and growth on different sources of carbon and energy. This work illustrates how integration of computational and experimental efforts facilitates the understanding of microbial metabolism at a

  19. Investigating host-pathogen behavior and their interaction using genome-scale metabolic network models.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sadhukhan, Priyanka P; Raghunathan, Anu

    2014-01-01

    Genome Scale Metabolic Modeling methods represent one way to compute whole cell function starting from the genome sequence of an organism and contribute towards understanding and predicting the genotype-phenotype relationship. About 80 models spanning all the kingdoms of life from archaea to eukaryotes have been built till date and used to interrogate cell phenotype under varying conditions. These models have been used to not only understand the flux distribution in evolutionary conserved pathways like glycolysis and the Krebs cycle but also in applications ranging from value added product formation in Escherichia coli to predicting inborn errors of Homo sapiens metabolism. This chapter describes a protocol that delineates the process of genome scale metabolic modeling for analysing host-pathogen behavior and interaction using flux balance analysis (FBA). The steps discussed in the process include (1) reconstruction of a metabolic network from the genome sequence, (2) its representation in a precise mathematical framework, (3) its translation to a model, and (4) the analysis using linear algebra and optimization. The methods for biological interpretations of computed cell phenotypes in the context of individual host and pathogen models and their integration are also discussed.

  20. Novel Plasmodium falciparum metabolic network reconstruction identifies shifts associated with clinical antimalarial resistance.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Carey, Maureen A; Papin, Jason A; Guler, Jennifer L

    2017-07-19

    Malaria remains a major public health burden and resistance has emerged to every antimalarial on the market, including the frontline drug, artemisinin. Our limited understanding of Plasmodium biology hinders the elucidation of resistance mechanisms. In this regard, systems biology approaches can facilitate the integration of existing experimental knowledge and further understanding of these mechanisms. Here, we developed a novel genome-scale metabolic network reconstruction, iPfal17, of the asexual blood-stage P. falciparum parasite to expand our understanding of metabolic changes that support resistance. We identified 11 metabolic tasks to evaluate iPfal17 performance. Flux balance analysis and simulation of gene knockouts and enzyme inhibition predict candidate drug targets unique to resistant parasites. Moreover, integration of clinical parasite transcriptomes into the iPfal17 reconstruction reveals patterns associated with antimalarial resistance. These results predict that artemisinin sensitive and resistant parasites differentially utilize scavenging and biosynthetic pathways for multiple essential metabolites, including folate and polyamines. Our findings are consistent with experimental literature, while generating novel hypotheses about artemisinin resistance and parasite biology. We detect evidence that resistant parasites maintain greater metabolic flexibility, perhaps representing an incomplete transition to the metabolic state most appropriate for nutrient-rich blood. Using this systems biology approach, we identify metabolic shifts that arise with or in support of the resistant phenotype. This perspective allows us to more productively analyze and interpret clinical expression data for the identification of candidate drug targets for the treatment of resistant parasites.

  1. Do all roads lead to Rome? A comparison of brain networks derived from inter-subject volumetric and metabolic covariance and moment-to-moment hemodynamic correlations in old individuals.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Di, Xin; Gohel, Suril; Thielcke, Andre; Wehrl, Hans F; Biswal, Bharat B

    2017-11-01

    Relationships between spatially remote brain regions in human have typically been estimated by moment-to-moment correlations of blood-oxygen-level dependent signals in resting-state using functional MRI (fMRI). Recently, studies using subject-to-subject covariance of anatomical volumes, cortical thickness, and metabolic activity are becoming increasingly popular. However, question remains on whether these measures reflect the same inter-region connectivity and brain network organizations. In the current study, we systematically analyzed inter-subject volumetric covariance from anatomical MRI images, metabolic covariance from fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography images from 193 healthy subjects, and resting-state moment-to-moment correlations from fMRI images of a subset of 44 subjects. The correlation matrices calculated from the three methods were found to be minimally correlated, with higher correlation in the range of 0.31, as well as limited proportion of overlapping connections. The volumetric network showed the highest global efficiency and lowest mean clustering coefficient, leaning toward random-like network, while the metabolic and resting-state networks conveyed properties more resembling small-world networks. Community structures of the volumetric and metabolic networks did not reflect known functional organizations, which could be observed in resting-state network. The current results suggested that inter-subject volumetric and metabolic covariance do not necessarily reflect the inter-regional relationships and network organizations as resting-state correlations, thus calling for cautions on interpreting results of inter-subject covariance networks.

  2. Modeling integrated cellular machinery using hybrid Petri-Boolean networks.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Natalie Berestovsky

    Full Text Available The behavior and phenotypic changes of cells are governed by a cellular circuitry that represents a set of biochemical reactions. Based on biological functions, this circuitry is divided into three types of networks, each encoding for a major biological process: signal transduction, transcription regulation, and metabolism. This division has generally enabled taming computational complexity dealing with the entire system, allowed for using modeling techniques that are specific to each of the components, and achieved separation of the different time scales at which reactions in each of the three networks occur. Nonetheless, with this division comes loss of information and power needed to elucidate certain cellular phenomena. Within the cell, these three types of networks work in tandem, and each produces signals and/or substances that are used by the others to process information and operate normally. Therefore, computational techniques for modeling integrated cellular machinery are needed. In this work, we propose an integrated hybrid model (IHM that combines Petri nets and Boolean networks to model integrated cellular networks. Coupled with a stochastic simulation mechanism, the model simulates the dynamics of the integrated network, and can be perturbed to generate testable hypotheses. Our model is qualitative and is mostly built upon knowledge from the literature and requires fine-tuning of very few parameters. We validated our model on two systems: the transcriptional regulation of glucose metabolism in human cells, and cellular osmoregulation in S. cerevisiae. The model produced results that are in very good agreement with experimental data, and produces valid hypotheses. The abstract nature of our model and the ease of its construction makes it a very good candidate for modeling integrated networks from qualitative data. The results it produces can guide the practitioner to zoom into components and interconnections and investigate them

  3. Explicit integration of extremely stiff reaction networks: partial equilibrium methods

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Guidry, M W; Hix, W R; Billings, J J

    2013-01-01

    In two preceding papers (Guidry et al 2013 Comput. Sci. Disc. 6 015001 and Guidry and Harris 2013 Comput. Sci. Disc. 6 015002), we have shown that when reaction networks are well removed from equilibrium, explicit asymptotic and quasi-steady-state approximations can give algebraically stabilized integration schemes that rival standard implicit methods in accuracy and speed for extremely stiff systems. However, we also showed that these explicit methods remain accurate but are no longer competitive in speed as the network approaches equilibrium. In this paper, we analyze this failure and show that it is associated with the presence of fast equilibration timescales that neither asymptotic nor quasi-steady-state approximations are able to remove efficiently from the numerical integration. Based on this understanding, we develop a partial equilibrium method to deal effectively with the approach to equilibrium and show that explicit asymptotic methods, combined with the new partial equilibrium methods, give an integration scheme that can plausibly deal with the stiffest networks, even in the approach to equilibrium, with accuracy and speed competitive with that of implicit methods. Thus we demonstrate that such explicit methods may offer alternatives to implicit integration of even extremely stiff systems and that these methods may permit integration of much larger networks than have been possible before in a number of fields. (paper)

  4. Expanding the scope of cyclopropene reporters for the detection of metabolically engineered glycoproteins by Diels–Alder reactions

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Anne-Katrin Späte

    2014-09-01

    Full Text Available Monitoring glycoconjugates has been tremendously facilitated by the development of metabolic oligosaccharide engineering. Recently, the inverse-electron-demand Diels–Alder reaction between methylcyclopropene tags and tetrazines has become a popular ligation reaction due to the small size and high reactivity of cyclopropene tags. Attaching the cyclopropene tag to mannosamine via a carbamate linkage has made the reaction even more efficient. Here, we expand the application of cyclopropene tags to N-acylgalactosamine and N-acylglucosamine derivatives enabling the visualization of mucin-type O-glycoproteins and O-GlcNAcylated proteins through Diels–Alder chemistry. Whereas the previously reported cyclopropene-labeled N-acylmannosamine derivative leads to significantly higher fluorescence staining of cell-surface glycoconjugates, the glucosamine derivative gave higher labeling efficiency with protein preparations containing also intracellular proteins.

  5. MSU SINP CDFE nuclear data activities in the nuclear reaction data centres network

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Boboshin, I.N.; Varlamov, V.V.; Komarov, S.Yu.; Peskov, N.N.; Semin, S.B.; Stepanov, M.E.; Chesnokov, V.V.

    2002-01-01

    This paper is the progress report of the Centre for Photonuclear Experiments Data, Moscow. It is a short review of the works carried out by the CDFE concerning the IAEA nuclear reaction data centers network activities from May 2001 until May 2002. and the description of the main results obtained. (a.n.)

  6. Effects of dietary bread crust Maillard reaction products on calcium and bone metabolism in rats.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Roncero-Ramos, Irene; Delgado-Andrade, Cristina; Haro, Ana; Ruiz-Roca, Beatriz; Morales, Francisco J; Navarro, María Pilar

    2013-06-01

    Maillard reaction products (MRP) consumption has been related with the development of bone degenerative disorders, probably linked to changes in calcium metabolism. We aimed to investigate the effects of MRP intake from bread crust on calcium balance and its distribution, and bone metabolism. During 88 days, rats were fed control diet or diets containing bread crust as source of MRP, or its soluble high molecular weight, soluble low molecular weight or insoluble fractions (bread crust, HMW, LMW and insoluble diets, respectively). In the final week, a calcium balance was performed, then animals were sacrified and some organs removed to analyse calcium levels. A second balance was carried out throughout the experimental period to calculate global calcium retention. Biochemical parameters and bone metabolism markers were measured in serum or urine. Global calcium bioavailability was unmodified by consumption of bread crust or its isolate fractions, corroborating the previously described low affinity of MRP to bind calcium. Despite this, a higher calcium concentration was found in femur due to smaller bones having a lower relative density. The isolate consumption of the fractions altered some bone markers, reflecting a situation of increased bone resorption or higher turnover; this did not take place in the animals fed the bread crust diet. Thus, the bread crust intake does not affect negatively calcium bioavailability and bone metabolism.

  7. Increasing galactose consumption by Saccharomyces cerevisiae through metabolic engineering of the GAL gene regulatory network

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Østergaard, Simon; Olsson, Lisbeth; Johnston, M.

    2000-01-01

    Increasing the flux through central carbon metabolism is difficult because of rigidity in regulatory structures, at both the genetic and the enzymatic levels. Here we describe metabolic engineering of a regulatory network to obtain a balanced increase in the activity of all the enzymes in the pat...... media. The improved galactose consumption of the gal mutants did not favor biomass formation, but rather caused excessive respiro-fermentative metabolism, with the ethanol production rate increasing linearly with glycolytic flux....... by eliminating three known negative regulators of the GAL system: Gale, Gal80, and Mig1. This led to a 41% increase in flux through the galactose utilization pathway compared with the wild-type strain. This is of significant interest within the field of biotechnology since galactose is present in many industrial...

  8. Impulsive Synchronization of Reaction-Diffusion Neural Networks With Mixed Delays and Its Application to Image Encryption.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chen, Wu-Hua; Luo, Shixian; Zheng, Wei Xing

    2016-12-01

    This paper presents a new impulsive synchronization criterion of two identical reaction-diffusion neural networks with discrete and unbounded distributed delays. The new criterion is established by applying an impulse-time-dependent Lyapunov functional combined with the use of a new type of integral inequality for treating the reaction-diffusion terms. The impulse-time-dependent feature of the proposed Lyapunov functional can capture more hybrid dynamical behaviors of the impulsive reaction-diffusion neural networks than the conventional impulse-time-independent Lyapunov functions/functionals, while the new integral inequality, which is derived from Wirtinger's inequality, overcomes the conservatism introduced by the integral inequality used in the previous results. Numerical examples demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method. Later, the developed impulsive synchronization method is applied to build a spatiotemporal chaotic cryptosystem that can transmit an encrypted image. The experimental results verify that the proposed image-encrypting cryptosystem has the advantages of large key space and high security against some traditional attacks.

  9. Metabolic network analysis-based identification of antimicrobial drug targets in category A bioterrorism agents.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Yong-Yeol Ahn

    Full Text Available The 2001 anthrax mail attacks in the United States demonstrated the potential threat of bioterrorism, hence driving the need to develop sophisticated treatment and diagnostic protocols to counter biological warfare. Here, by performing flux balance analyses on the fully-annotated metabolic networks of multiple, whole genome-sequenced bacterial strains, we have identified a large number of metabolic enzymes as potential drug targets for each of the three Category A-designated bioterrorism agents including Bacillus anthracis, Francisella tularensis and Yersinia pestis. Nine metabolic enzymes- belonging to the coenzyme A, folate, phosphatidyl-ethanolamine and nucleic acid pathways common to all strains across the three distinct genera were identified as targets. Antimicrobial agents against some of these enzymes are available. Thus, a combination of cross species-specific antibiotics and common antimicrobials against shared targets may represent a useful combinatorial therapeutic approach against all Category A bioterrorism agents.

  10. Propagation of kinetic uncertainties through a canonical topology of the TLR4 signaling network in different regions of biochemical reaction space

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    St Laurent Georges

    2010-03-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background Signal transduction networks represent the information processing systems that dictate which dynamical regimes of biochemical activity can be accessible to a cell under certain circumstances. One of the major concerns in molecular systems biology is centered on the elucidation of the robustness properties and information processing capabilities of signal transduction networks. Achieving this goal requires the establishment of causal relations between the design principle of biochemical reaction systems and their emergent dynamical behaviors. Methods In this study, efforts were focused in the construction of a relatively well informed, deterministic, non-linear dynamic model, accounting for reaction mechanisms grounded on standard mass action and Hill saturation kinetics, of the canonical reaction topology underlying Toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4-mediated signaling events. This signaling mechanism has been shown to be deployed in macrophages during a relatively short time window in response to lypopolysaccharyde (LPS stimulation, which leads to a rapidly mounted innate immune response. An extensive computational exploration of the biochemical reaction space inhabited by this signal transduction network was performed via local and global perturbation strategies. Importantly, a broad spectrum of biologically plausible dynamical regimes accessible to the network in widely scattered regions of parameter space was reconstructed computationally. Additionally, experimentally reported transcriptional readouts of target pro-inflammatory genes, which are actively modulated by the network in response to LPS stimulation, were also simulated. This was done with the main goal of carrying out an unbiased statistical assessment of the intrinsic robustness properties of this canonical reaction topology. Results Our simulation results provide convincing numerical evidence supporting the idea that a canonical reaction mechanism of the TLR4

  11. A Reaction-Diffusion-Based Coding Rate Control Mechanism for Camera Sensor Networks

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Naoki Wakamiya

    2010-08-01

    Full Text Available A wireless camera sensor network is useful for surveillance and monitoring for its visibility and easy deployment. However, it suffers from the limited capacity of wireless communication and a network is easily overflown with a considerable amount of video traffic. In this paper, we propose an autonomous video coding rate control mechanism where each camera sensor node can autonomously determine its coding rate in accordance with the location and velocity of target objects. For this purpose, we adopted a biological model, i.e., reaction-diffusion model, inspired by the similarity of biological spatial patterns and the spatial distribution of video coding rate. Through simulation and practical experiments, we verify the effectiveness of our proposal.

  12. A reaction-diffusion-based coding rate control mechanism for camera sensor networks.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Yamamoto, Hiroshi; Hyodo, Katsuya; Wakamiya, Naoki; Murata, Masayuki

    2010-01-01

    A wireless camera sensor network is useful for surveillance and monitoring for its visibility and easy deployment. However, it suffers from the limited capacity of wireless communication and a network is easily overflown with a considerable amount of video traffic. In this paper, we propose an autonomous video coding rate control mechanism where each camera sensor node can autonomously determine its coding rate in accordance with the location and velocity of target objects. For this purpose, we adopted a biological model, i.e., reaction-diffusion model, inspired by the similarity of biological spatial patterns and the spatial distribution of video coding rate. Through simulation and practical experiments, we verify the effectiveness of our proposal.

  13. Integrated, systems metabolic picture of acetone-butanol-ethanol fermentation by Clostridium acetobutylicum.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Liao, Chen; Seo, Seung-Oh; Celik, Venhar; Liu, Huaiwei; Kong, Wentao; Wang, Yi; Blaschek, Hans; Jin, Yong-Su; Lu, Ting

    2015-07-07

    Microbial metabolism involves complex, system-level processes implemented via the orchestration of metabolic reactions, gene regulation, and environmental cues. One canonical example of such processes is acetone-butanol-ethanol (ABE) fermentation by Clostridium acetobutylicum, during which cells convert carbon sources to organic acids that are later reassimilated to produce solvents as a strategy for cellular survival. The complexity and systems nature of the process have been largely underappreciated, rendering challenges in understanding and optimizing solvent production. Here, we present a system-level computational framework for ABE fermentation that combines metabolic reactions, gene regulation, and environmental cues. We developed the framework by decomposing the entire system into three modules, building each module separately, and then assembling them back into an integrated system. During the model construction, a bottom-up approach was used to link molecular events at the single-cell level into the events at the population level. The integrated model was able to successfully reproduce ABE fermentations of the WT C. acetobutylicum (ATCC 824), as well as its mutants, using data obtained from our own experiments and from literature. Furthermore, the model confers successful predictions of the fermentations with various network perturbations across metabolic, genetic, and environmental aspects. From foundation to applications, the framework advances our understanding of complex clostridial metabolism and physiology and also facilitates the development of systems engineering strategies for the production of advanced biofuels.

  14. GABAA receptor activity modulating piperine analogs: In vitro metabolic stability, metabolite identification, CYP450 reaction phenotyping, and protein binding.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zabela, Volha; Hettich, Timm; Schlotterbeck, Götz; Wimmer, Laurin; Mihovilovic, Marko D; Guillet, Fabrice; Bouaita, Belkacem; Shevchenko, Bénédicte; Hamburger, Matthias; Oufir, Mouhssin

    2018-01-01

    In a screening of natural products for allosteric modulators of GABA A receptors (γ-aminobutyric acid type A receptor), piperine was identified as a compound targeting a benzodiazepine-independent binding site. Given that piperine is also an activator of TRPV1 (transient receptor potential vanilloid type 1) receptors involved in pain signaling and thermoregulation, a series of piperine analogs were prepared in several cycles of structural optimization, with the aim of separating GABA A and TRPV1 activating properties. We here investigated the metabolism of piperine and selected analogs in view of further cycles of lead optimization. Metabolic stability of the compounds was evaluated by incubation with pooled human liver microsomes, and metabolites were analyzed by UHPLC-Q-TOF-MS. CYP450 isoenzymes involved in metabolism of compounds were identified by reaction phenotyping with Silensomes™. Unbound fraction in whole blood was determined by rapid equilibrium dialysis. Piperine was the metabolically most stable compound. Aliphatic hydroxylation, and N- and O-dealkylation were the major routes of oxidative metabolism. Piperine was exclusively metabolized by CYP1A2, whereas CYP2C9 contributed significantly in the oxidative metabolism of all analogs. Extensive binding to blood constituents was observed for all compounds. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  15. Segmenting Costumers Based on Their Reactions to Social Networks Marketing on Instagram

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    rashin ghahreman

    2017-09-01

    Full Text Available Since customers react differently to business and marketing on social networks, the researcher is looking for segmenting customers into different categories according to their reaction to marketing in social networks. The present study is a descriptive-exploratory research and the data were collected through a questionnaire. The population of 14,000 follower of the researcher’s personal page on Instagram were analyzed and a sample 224 members were randomly selected. To analyze the data, a two-step clustering method was applied. As a result, five distinct clusters (the active, the talker, the hesitant, the passive and the averse were identified. Two segments were reported to be highly influenced by social networks marketing in terms of brand engagement, purchase intention and word of mouth advertisement (WOM. The "Active" are the most influenced group including 18.3% of the population most of whom are single girls or women. The next group that are influenced the most by social networks marketing is the "Talker". This group represents 24.1% of the population, the most populated group. The "Talker" are different from the "Active" in term of their intention to purchase. Totally, 42.2% of the population are reported to be influenced by social networks marketing.

  16. Signalling network construction for modelling plant defence response.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Dragana Miljkovic

    Full Text Available Plant defence signalling response against various pathogens, including viruses, is a complex phenomenon. In resistant interaction a plant cell perceives the pathogen signal, transduces it within the cell and performs a reprogramming of the cell metabolism leading to the pathogen replication arrest. This work focuses on signalling pathways crucial for the plant defence response, i.e., the salicylic acid, jasmonic acid and ethylene signal transduction pathways, in the Arabidopsis thaliana model plant. The initial signalling network topology was constructed manually by defining the representation formalism, encoding the information from public databases and literature, and composing a pathway diagram. The manually constructed network structure consists of 175 components and 387 reactions. In order to complement the network topology with possibly missing relations, a new approach to automated information extraction from biological literature was developed. This approach, named Bio3graph, allows for automated extraction of biological relations from the literature, resulting in a set of (component1, reaction, component2 triplets and composing a graph structure which can be visualised, compared to the manually constructed topology and examined by the experts. Using a plant defence response vocabulary of components and reaction types, Bio3graph was applied to a set of 9,586 relevant full text articles, resulting in 137 newly detected reactions between the components. Finally, the manually constructed topology and the new reactions were merged to form a network structure consisting of 175 components and 524 reactions. The resulting pathway diagram of plant defence signalling represents a valuable source for further computational modelling and interpretation of omics data. The developed Bio3graph approach, implemented as an executable language processing and graph visualisation workflow, is publically available at http://ropot.ijs.si/bio3graph/and can be

  17. Flavylium network of chemical reactions in confined media: modulation of 3',4',7-trihydroxyflavilium reactions by host-guest interactions with cucurbit[7]uril.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Basílio, Nuno; Pina, Fernando

    2014-08-04

    In moderately acidic aqueous solutions, flavylium compounds undergo a pH-, and in some cases, light-dependent array of reversible chemical reactions. This network can be described as a single acid-base reaction involving a flavylium cation (acidic form) and a mixture of basic forms (quinoidal base, hemiketal and cis and trans chalcones). The apparent pK'a of the system and the relative mole fractions of the basic forms can be modulated by the interaction with cucurbit[7]uril. The system is studied by using (1) H NMR spectroscopy, UV/Vis spectroscopy, flash photolysis, and steady-state irradiation. Of all the network species, the flavylium cation possesses the highest affinity for cucurbit[7]uril. The rate of interconversion between flavylium cation and the basic species (where trans-chalcone is dominant) is approximately nine times lower inside the cucurbit[7]uril. © 2014 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.

  18. Experimental (Network) and Evaluated Nuclear Reaction Data at NDS

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Otsuka, N.; Semkova, V.; Simakov, S.P.; Zerkin, V.

    2011-01-01

    Dr Simakov of Nuclear Data Services Unit in the Nuclear Data Section (NDS) gave a brief overview of the data compilation and evaluation activities in the nuclear data community: experimental nuclear reaction data (EXFOR, http://www-nds.iaea.org/exfor/) and evaluated nuclear reaction data (ENDF, http://www-nds.iaea.org/endf). The International Network of Nuclear Reaction Data Centres (NRDC) coordinated by NDS includes 14 Centres in 8 Countries (China, Hungary, India, Japan, Korea, Russian, Ukraine, USA) and 2 International Organizations (NEA, IAEA). It had the first meeting of four core centres (Brookhaven, Saclay, Obninsk, Vienna) in 1966 and the EXFOR was adopted as an official data exchange format. In 2000, IAEA implemented the EXFOR database as a relational multiform database and the EXFOR is a trusted, increasing and living database with 19100 experimental works (as of September 2011) and 141600 data tables. The EXFOR provides a compilation control system for selection of articles and compilation of data and the NRDC home page provides manuals, documents and codes. The nuclear data can be retrieved by the web-retrieval system or distributed on a DVD on request. The EXFOR data play a critical role in the development of evaluated nuclear reaction data. There are several major general purpose libraries: ENDF (US), CENDL (China), JEFF (EU), JENDL (Japan) and RUSFOND (Russia). In addition, there are special libraries for particular applications: EAF (European Activation File), FENDL (Fusion Evaluated Nuclear Data Library for ITER neutronics), IBANDL (Ion Beam Analysis Nuclear Data Library for surface analysis of solids), IRDF, DXS (Dosimetry, radiation damage and gas production data) and Medical portal. Dr V. Zerkin of NDS demonstrated the data retrieval from the EXFOR database and the ENDF library.

  19. Experimental (Network) and Evaluated Nuclear Reaction Data at NDS

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Otsuka, N; Semkova, V; Simakov, S P; Zerkin, V [Nuclear Data Services Unit, Nuclear Data Section, IAEA, Vienna (Austria)

    2011-11-15

    Dr Simakov of Nuclear Data Services Unit in the Nuclear Data Section (NDS) gave a brief overview of the data compilation and evaluation activities in the nuclear data community: experimental nuclear reaction data (EXFOR, http://www-nds.iaea.org/exfor/) and evaluated nuclear reaction data (ENDF, http://www-nds.iaea.org/endf). The International Network of Nuclear Reaction Data Centres (NRDC) coordinated by NDS includes 14 Centres in 8 Countries (China, Hungary, India, Japan, Korea, Russian, Ukraine, USA) and 2 International Organizations (NEA, IAEA). It had the first meeting of four core centres (Brookhaven, Saclay, Obninsk, Vienna) in 1966 and the EXFOR was adopted as an official data exchange format. In 2000, IAEA implemented the EXFOR database as a relational multiform database and the EXFOR is a trusted, increasing and living database with 19100 experimental works (as of September 2011) and 141600 data tables. The EXFOR provides a compilation control system for selection of articles and compilation of data and the NRDC home page provides manuals, documents and codes. The nuclear data can be retrieved by the web-retrieval system or distributed on a DVD on request. The EXFOR data play a critical role in the development of evaluated nuclear reaction data. There are several major general purpose libraries: ENDF (US), CENDL (China), JEFF (EU), JENDL (Japan) and RUSFOND (Russia). In addition, there are special libraries for particular applications: EAF (European Activation File), FENDL (Fusion Evaluated Nuclear Data Library for ITER neutronics), IBANDL (Ion Beam Analysis Nuclear Data Library for surface analysis of solids), IRDF, DXS (Dosimetry, radiation damage and gas production data) and Medical portal. Dr V. Zerkin of NDS demonstrated the data retrieval from the EXFOR database and the ENDF library.

  20. IdentiCS – Identification of coding sequence and in silico reconstruction of the metabolic network directly from unannotated low-coverage bacterial genome sequence

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Zeng An-Ping

    2004-08-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background A necessary step for a genome level analysis of the cellular metabolism is the in silico reconstruction of the metabolic network from genome sequences. The available methods are mainly based on the annotation of genome sequences including two successive steps, the prediction of coding sequences (CDS and their function assignment. The annotation process takes time. The available methods often encounter difficulties when dealing with unfinished error-containing genomic sequence. Results In this work a fast method is proposed to use unannotated genome sequence for predicting CDSs and for an in silico reconstruction of metabolic networks. Instead of using predicted genes or CDSs to query public databases, entries from public DNA or protein databases are used as queries to search a local database of the unannotated genome sequence to predict CDSs. Functions are assigned to the predicted CDSs simultaneously. The well-annotated genome of Salmonella typhimurium LT2 is used as an example to demonstrate the applicability of the method. 97.7% of the CDSs in the original annotation are correctly identified. The use of SWISS-PROT-TrEMBL databases resulted in an identification of 98.9% of CDSs that have EC-numbers in the published annotation. Furthermore, two versions of sequences of the bacterium Klebsiella pneumoniae with different genome coverage (3.9 and 7.9 fold, respectively are examined. The results suggest that a 3.9-fold coverage of the bacterial genome could be sufficiently used for the in silico reconstruction of the metabolic network. Compared to other gene finding methods such as CRITICA our method is more suitable for exploiting sequences of low genome coverage. Based on the new method, a program called IdentiCS (Identification of Coding Sequences from Unfinished Genome Sequences is delivered that combines the identification of CDSs with the reconstruction, comparison and visualization of metabolic networks (free to download

  1. Noise-induced modulation of the relaxation kinetics around a non-equilibrium steady state of non-linear chemical reaction networks.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ramaswamy, Rajesh; Sbalzarini, Ivo F; González-Segredo, Nélido

    2011-01-28

    Stochastic effects from correlated noise non-trivially modulate the kinetics of non-linear chemical reaction networks. This is especially important in systems where reactions are confined to small volumes and reactants are delivered in bursts. We characterise how the two noise sources confinement and burst modulate the relaxation kinetics of a non-linear reaction network around a non-equilibrium steady state. We find that the lifetimes of species change with burst input and confinement. Confinement increases the lifetimes of all species that are involved in any non-linear reaction as a reactant. Burst monotonically increases or decreases lifetimes. Competition between burst-induced and confinement-induced modulation may hence lead to a non-monotonic modulation. We quantify lifetime as the integral of the time autocorrelation function (ACF) of concentration fluctuations around a non-equilibrium steady state of the reaction network. Furthermore, we look at the first and second derivatives of the ACF, each of which is affected in opposite ways by burst and confinement. This allows discriminating between these two noise sources. We analytically derive the ACF from the linear Fokker-Planck approximation of the chemical master equation in order to establish a baseline for the burst-induced modulation at low confinement. Effects of higher confinement are then studied using a partial-propensity stochastic simulation algorithm. The results presented here may help understand the mechanisms that deviate stochastic kinetics from its deterministic counterpart. In addition, they may be instrumental when using fluorescence-lifetime imaging microscopy (FLIM) or fluorescence-correlation spectroscopy (FCS) to measure confinement and burst in systems with known reaction rates, or, alternatively, to correct for the effects of confinement and burst when experimentally measuring reaction rates.

  2. Metabolic profiling of a mapping population exposes new insights in the regulation of seed metabolism and seed, fruit, and plant relations.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    David Toubiana

    Full Text Available To investigate the regulation of seed metabolism and to estimate the degree of metabolic natural variability, metabolite profiling and network analysis were applied to a collection of 76 different homozygous tomato introgression lines (ILs grown in the field in two consecutive harvest seasons. Factorial ANOVA confirmed the presence of 30 metabolite quantitative trait loci (mQTL. Amino acid contents displayed a high degree of variability across the population, with similar patterns across the two seasons, while sugars exhibited significant seasonal fluctuations. Upon integration of data for tomato pericarp metabolite profiling, factorial ANOVA identified the main factor for metabolic polymorphism to be the genotypic background rather than the environment or the tissue. Analysis of the coefficient of variance indicated greater phenotypic plasticity in the ILs than in the M82 tomato cultivar. Broad-sense estimate of heritability suggested that the mode of inheritance of metabolite traits in the seed differed from that in the fruit. Correlation-based metabolic network analysis comparing metabolite data for the seed with that for the pericarp showed that the seed network displayed tighter interdependence of metabolic processes than the fruit. Amino acids in the seed metabolic network were shown to play a central hub-like role in the topology of the network, maintaining high interactions with other metabolite categories, i.e., sugars and organic acids. Network analysis identified six exceptionally highly co-regulated amino acids, Gly, Ser, Thr, Ile, Val, and Pro. The strong interdependence of this group was confirmed by the mQTL mapping. Taken together these results (i reflect the extensive redundancy of the regulation underlying seed metabolism, (ii demonstrate the tight co-ordination of seed metabolism with respect to fruit metabolism, and (iii emphasize the centrality of the amino acid module in the seed metabolic network. Finally, the study

  3. PPARγ population shift produces disease-related changes in molecular networks associated with metabolic syndrome.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Jurkowski, W; Roomp, K; Crespo, I; Schneider, J G; Del Sol, A

    2011-08-11

    Peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor gamma (PPARγ) is a key regulator of adipocyte differentiation and has an important role in metabolic syndrome. Phosphorylation of the receptor's ligand-binding domain at serine 273 has been shown to change the expression of a large number of genes implicated in obesity. The difference in gene expression seen when comparing wild-type phosphorylated with mutant non-phosphorylated PPARγ may have important consequences for the cellular molecular network, the state of which can be shifted from the healthy to a stable diseased state. We found that a group of differentially expressed genes are involved in bi-stable switches and form a core network, the state of which changes with disease progression. These findings support the idea that bi-stable switches may be a mechanism for locking the core gene network into a diseased state and for efficiently propagating perturbations to more distant regions of the network. A structural analysis of the PPARγ-RXRα dimer complex supports the hypothesis of a major structural change between the two states, and this may represent an important mechanism leading to the differential expression observed in the core network.

  4. SolCyc: a database hub at the Sol Genomics Network (SGN) for the manual curation of metabolic networks in Solanum and Nicotiana specific databases

    Science.gov (United States)

    Foerster, Hartmut; Bombarely, Aureliano; Battey, James N D; Sierro, Nicolas; Ivanov, Nikolai V; Mueller, Lukas A

    2018-01-01

    Abstract SolCyc is the entry portal to pathway/genome databases (PGDBs) for major species of the Solanaceae family hosted at the Sol Genomics Network. Currently, SolCyc comprises six organism-specific PGDBs for tomato, potato, pepper, petunia, tobacco and one Rubiaceae, coffee. The metabolic networks of those PGDBs have been computationally predicted by the pathologic component of the pathway tools software using the manually curated multi-domain database MetaCyc (http://www.metacyc.org/) as reference. SolCyc has been recently extended by taxon-specific databases, i.e. the family-specific SolanaCyc database, containing only curated data pertinent to species of the nightshade family, and NicotianaCyc, a genus-specific database that stores all relevant metabolic data of the Nicotiana genus. Through manual curation of the published literature, new metabolic pathways have been created in those databases, which are complemented by the continuously updated, relevant species-specific pathways from MetaCyc. At present, SolanaCyc comprises 199 pathways and 29 superpathways and NicotianaCyc accounts for 72 pathways and 13 superpathways. Curator-maintained, taxon-specific databases such as SolanaCyc and NicotianaCyc are characterized by an enrichment of data specific to these taxa and free of falsely predicted pathways. Both databases have been used to update recently created Nicotiana-specific databases for Nicotiana tabacum, Nicotiana benthamiana, Nicotiana sylvestris and Nicotiana tomentosiformis by propagating verifiable data into those PGDBs. In addition, in-depth curation of the pathways in N.tabacum has been carried out which resulted in the elimination of 156 pathways from the 569 pathways predicted by pathway tools. Together, in-depth curation of the predicted pathway network and the supplementation with curated data from taxon-specific databases has substantially improved the curation status of the species–specific N.tabacum PGDB. The implementation of this

  5. From Network Analysis to Functional Metabolic Modeling of the Human Gut Microbiota.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bauer, Eugen; Thiele, Ines

    2018-01-01

    An important hallmark of the human gut microbiota is its species diversity and complexity. Various diseases have been associated with a decreased diversity leading to reduced metabolic functionalities. Common approaches to investigate the human microbiota include high-throughput sequencing with subsequent correlative analyses. However, to understand the ecology of the human gut microbiota and consequently design novel treatments for diseases, it is important to represent the different interactions between microbes with their associated metabolites. Computational systems biology approaches can give further mechanistic insights by constructing data- or knowledge-driven networks that represent microbe interactions. In this minireview, we will discuss current approaches in systems biology to analyze the human gut microbiota, with a particular focus on constraint-based modeling. We will discuss various community modeling techniques with their advantages and differences, as well as their application to predict the metabolic mechanisms of intestinal microbial communities. Finally, we will discuss future perspectives and current challenges of simulating realistic and comprehensive models of the human gut microbiota.

  6. Exploring metabolic pathway disruption in the subchronic phencyclidine model of schizophrenia with the Generalized Singular Value Decomposition

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Morris Brian J

    2011-05-01

    Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG metabolite pathway database were altered in the PFC of PCP-treated rats. Several significant changes were discovered, notably: 1 neuroactive ligands active at glutamate and GABA receptors are disrupted in the PFC of PCP-treated animals, 2 glutamate dysfunction in these animals was not limited to compromised glutamatergic neurotransmission but also involves the disruption of metabolic pathways linked to glutamate; and 3 a specific series of purine reactions Xanthine ← Hypoxyanthine ↔ Inosine ← IMP → adenylosuccinate is also disrupted in the PFC of PCP-treated animals. Conclusions Network reordering via the GSVD provides a means to discover statistically validated differences in clustering between a pair of networks. In practice this analytical approach, when applied to metabolomic data, allows us to quantify the alterations in metabolic pathways between two experimental groups. With this new computational technique we identified metabolic pathway alterations that are consistent with known results. Furthermore, we discovered disruption in a novel series of purine reactions that may contribute to the PFC dysfunction and cognitive deficits seen in schizophrenia.

  7. Hybrid Multilevel Monte Carlo Simulation of Stochastic Reaction Networks

    KAUST Repository

    Moraes, Alvaro

    2015-01-07

    Stochastic reaction networks (SRNs) is a class of continuous-time Markov chains intended to describe, from the kinetic point of view, the time-evolution of chemical systems in which molecules of different chemical species undergo a finite set of reaction channels. This talk is based on articles [4, 5, 6], where we are interested in the following problem: given a SRN, X, defined though its set of reaction channels, and its initial state, x0, estimate E (g(X(T))); that is, the expected value of a scalar observable, g, of the process, X, at a fixed time, T. This problem lead us to define a series of Monte Carlo estimators, M, such that, with high probability can produce values close to the quantity of interest, E (g(X(T))). More specifically, given a user-selected tolerance, TOL, and a small confidence level, η, find an estimator, M, based on approximate sampled paths of X, such that, P (|E (g(X(T))) − M| ≤ TOL) ≥ 1 − η; even more, we want to achieve this objective with near optimal computational work. We first introduce a hybrid path-simulation scheme based on the well-known stochastic simulation algorithm (SSA)[3] and the tau-leap method [2]. Then, we introduce a Multilevel Monte Carlo strategy that allows us to achieve a computational complexity of order O(T OL−2), this is the same computational complexity as in an exact method but with a smaller constant. We provide numerical examples to show our results.

  8. Proteome- and transcriptome-driven reconstruction of the human myocyte metabolic network and its use for identification of markers for diabetes

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Väremo, Leif; Scheele, Camilla; Broholm, Christa

    2015-01-01

    -analysis of six studies comparing muscle transcription in T2D versus healthy subjects. Transcriptional changes were mapped on the myocyte GEM, revealing extensive transcriptional regulation in T2D, particularly around pyruvate oxidation, branched-chain amino acid catabolism, and tetrahydrofolate metabolism......Skeletal myocytes are metabolically active and susceptible to insulin resistance and are thus implicated in type 2 diabetes (T2D). This complex disease involves systemic metabolic changes, and their elucidation at the systems level requires genome-wide data and biological networks. Genome...

  9. Random catalytic reaction networks

    Science.gov (United States)

    Stadler, Peter F.; Fontana, Walter; Miller, John H.

    1993-03-01

    We study networks that are a generalization of replicator (or Lotka-Volterra) equations. They model the dynamics of a population of object types whose binary interactions determine the specific type of interaction product. Such a system always reduces its dimension to a subset that contains production pathways for all of its members. The network equation can be rewritten at a level of collectives in terms of two basic interaction patterns: replicator sets and cyclic transformation pathways among sets. Although the system contains well-known cases that exhibit very complicated dynamics, the generic behavior of randomly generated systems is found (numerically) to be extremely robust: convergence to a globally stable rest point. It is easy to tailor networks that display replicator interactions where the replicators are entire self-sustaining subsystems, rather than structureless units. A numerical scan of random systems highlights the special properties of elementary replicators: they reduce the effective interconnectedness of the system, resulting in enhanced competition, and strong correlations between the concentrations.

  10. A method for estimation of elasticities in metabolic networks using steady state and dynamic metabolomics data and linlog kinetics

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    van Gulik Walter M

    2006-12-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background Dynamic modeling of metabolic reaction networks under in vivo conditions is a crucial step in order to obtain a better understanding of the (disfunctioning of living cells. So far dynamic metabolic models generally have been based on mechanistic rate equations which often contain so many parameters that their identifiability from experimental data forms a serious problem. Recently, approximative rate equations, based on the linear logarithmic (linlog format have been proposed as a suitable alternative with fewer parameters. Results In this paper we present a method for estimation of the kinetic model parameters, which are equal to the elasticities defined in Metabolic Control Analysis, from metabolite data obtained from dynamic as well as steady state perturbations, using the linlog kinetic format. Additionally, we address the question of parameter identifiability from dynamic perturbation data in the presence of noise. The method is illustrated using metabolite data generated with a dynamic model of the glycolytic pathway of Saccharomyces cerevisiae based on mechanistic rate equations. Elasticities are estimated from the generated data, which define the complete linlog kinetic model of the glycolysis. The effect of data noise on the accuracy of the estimated elasticities is presented. Finally, identifiable subset of parameters is determined using information on the standard deviations of the estimated elasticities through Monte Carlo (MC simulations. Conclusion The parameter estimation within the linlog kinetic framework as presented here allows the determination of the elasticities directly from experimental data from typical dynamic and/or steady state experiments. These elasticities allow the reconstruction of the full kinetic model of Saccharomyces cerevisiae, and the determination of the control coefficients. MC simulations revealed that certain elasticities are potentially unidentifiable from dynamic data only

  11. Genetic Optimization Algorithm for Metabolic Engineering Revisited

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Tobias B. Alter

    2018-05-01

    Full Text Available To date, several independent methods and algorithms exist for exploiting constraint-based stoichiometric models to find metabolic engineering strategies that optimize microbial production performance. Optimization procedures based on metaheuristics facilitate a straightforward adaption and expansion of engineering objectives, as well as fitness functions, while being particularly suited for solving problems of high complexity. With the increasing interest in multi-scale models and a need for solving advanced engineering problems, we strive to advance genetic algorithms, which stand out due to their intuitive optimization principles and the proven usefulness in this field of research. A drawback of genetic algorithms is that premature convergence to sub-optimal solutions easily occurs if the optimization parameters are not adapted to the specific problem. Here, we conducted comprehensive parameter sensitivity analyses to study their impact on finding optimal strain designs. We further demonstrate the capability of genetic algorithms to simultaneously handle (i multiple, non-linear engineering objectives; (ii the identification of gene target-sets according to logical gene-protein-reaction associations; (iii minimization of the number of network perturbations; and (iv the insertion of non-native reactions, while employing genome-scale metabolic models. This framework adds a level of sophistication in terms of strain design robustness, which is exemplarily tested on succinate overproduction in Escherichia coli.

  12. The future of genome-scale modeling of yeast through integration of a transcriptional regulatory network

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Liu, Guodong; Marras, Antonio; Nielsen, Jens

    2014-01-01

    regulatory information is necessary to improve the accuracy and predictive ability of metabolic models. Here we review the strategies for the reconstruction of a transcriptional regulatory network (TRN) for yeast and the integration of such a reconstruction into a flux balance analysis-based metabolic model......Metabolism is regulated at multiple levels in response to the changes of internal or external conditions. Transcriptional regulation plays an important role in regulating many metabolic reactions by altering the concentrations of metabolic enzymes. Thus, integration of the transcriptional....... While many large-scale TRN reconstructions have been reported for yeast, these reconstructions still need to be improved regarding the functionality and dynamic property of the regulatory interactions. In addition, mathematical modeling approaches need to be further developed to efficiently integrate...

  13. Neural Network Control of CSTR for Reversible Reaction Using Reverence Model Approach

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Duncan ALOKO

    2007-01-01

    Full Text Available In this work, non-linear control of CSTR for reversible reaction is carried out using Neural Network as design tool. The Model Reverence approach in used to design ANN controller. The idea is to have a control system that will be able to achieve improvement in the level of conversion and to be able to track set point change and reject load disturbance. We use PID control scheme as benchmark to study the performance of the controller. The comparison shows that ANN controller out perform PID in the extreme range of non-linearity.This paper represents a preliminary effort to design a simplified neutral network control scheme for a class of non-linear process. Future works will involve further investigation of the effectiveness of thin approach for the real industrial chemical process

  14. Noise-induced modulation of the relaxation kinetics around a non-equilibrium steady state of non-linear chemical reaction networks.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Rajesh Ramaswamy

    2011-01-01

    Full Text Available Stochastic effects from correlated noise non-trivially modulate the kinetics of non-linear chemical reaction networks. This is especially important in systems where reactions are confined to small volumes and reactants are delivered in bursts. We characterise how the two noise sources confinement and burst modulate the relaxation kinetics of a non-linear reaction network around a non-equilibrium steady state. We find that the lifetimes of species change with burst input and confinement. Confinement increases the lifetimes of all species that are involved in any non-linear reaction as a reactant. Burst monotonically increases or decreases lifetimes. Competition between burst-induced and confinement-induced modulation may hence lead to a non-monotonic modulation. We quantify lifetime as the integral of the time autocorrelation function (ACF of concentration fluctuations around a non-equilibrium steady state of the reaction network. Furthermore, we look at the first and second derivatives of the ACF, each of which is affected in opposite ways by burst and confinement. This allows discriminating between these two noise sources. We analytically derive the ACF from the linear Fokker-Planck approximation of the chemical master equation in order to establish a baseline for the burst-induced modulation at low confinement. Effects of higher confinement are then studied using a partial-propensity stochastic simulation algorithm. The results presented here may help understand the mechanisms that deviate stochastic kinetics from its deterministic counterpart. In addition, they may be instrumental when using fluorescence-lifetime imaging microscopy (FLIM or fluorescence-correlation spectroscopy (FCS to measure confinement and burst in systems with known reaction rates, or, alternatively, to correct for the effects of confinement and burst when experimentally measuring reaction rates.

  15. Interpreting expression data with metabolic flux models: predicting Mycobacterium tuberculosis mycolic acid production.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Caroline Colijn

    2009-08-01

    Full Text Available Metabolism is central to cell physiology, and metabolic disturbances play a role in numerous disease states. Despite its importance, the ability to study metabolism at a global scale using genomic technologies is limited. In principle, complete genome sequences describe the range of metabolic reactions that are possible for an organism, but cannot quantitatively describe the behaviour of these reactions. We present a novel method for modeling metabolic states using whole cell measurements of gene expression. Our method, which we call E-Flux (as a combination of flux and expression, extends the technique of Flux Balance Analysis by modeling maximum flux constraints as a function of measured gene expression. In contrast to previous methods for metabolically interpreting gene expression data, E-Flux utilizes a model of the underlying metabolic network to directly predict changes in metabolic flux capacity. We applied E-Flux to Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the bacterium that causes tuberculosis (TB. Key components of mycobacterial cell walls are mycolic acids which are targets for several first-line TB drugs. We used E-Flux to predict the impact of 75 different drugs, drug combinations, and nutrient conditions on mycolic acid biosynthesis capacity in M. tuberculosis, using a public compendium of over 400 expression arrays. We tested our method using a model of mycolic acid biosynthesis as well as on a genome-scale model of M. tuberculosis metabolism. Our method correctly predicts seven of the eight known fatty acid inhibitors in this compendium and makes accurate predictions regarding the specificity of these compounds for fatty acid biosynthesis. Our method also predicts a number of additional potential modulators of TB mycolic acid biosynthesis. E-Flux thus provides a promising new approach for algorithmically predicting metabolic state from gene expression data.

  16. Metabolic Networks and Metabolites Underlie Associations Between Maternal Glucose During Pregnancy and Newborn Size at Birth.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Scholtens, Denise M; Bain, James R; Reisetter, Anna C; Muehlbauer, Michael J; Nodzenski, Michael; Stevens, Robert D; Ilkayeva, Olga; Lowe, Lynn P; Metzger, Boyd E; Newgard, Christopher B; Lowe, William L

    2016-07-01

    Maternal metabolites and metabolic networks underlying associations between maternal glucose during pregnancy and newborn birth weight and adiposity demand fuller characterization. We performed targeted and nontargeted gas chromatography/mass spectrometry metabolomics on maternal serum collected at fasting and 1 h following glucose beverage consumption during an oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT) for 400 northern European mothers at ∼28 weeks' gestation in the Hyperglycemia and Adverse Pregnancy Outcome Study. Amino acids, fatty acids, acylcarnitines, and products of lipid metabolism decreased and triglycerides increased during the OGTT. Analyses of individual metabolites indicated limited maternal glucose associations at fasting, but broader associations, including amino acids, fatty acids, carbohydrates, and lipids, were found at 1 h. Network analyses modeling metabolite correlations provided context for individual metabolite associations and elucidated collective associations of multiple classes of metabolic fuels with newborn size and adiposity, including acylcarnitines, fatty acids, carbohydrates, and organic acids. Random forest analyses indicated an improved ability to predict newborn size outcomes by using maternal metabolomics data beyond traditional risk factors, including maternal glucose. Broad-scale association of fuel metabolites with maternal glucose is evident during pregnancy, with unique maternal metabolites potentially contributing specifically to newborn birth weight and adiposity. © 2016 by the American Diabetes Association. Readers may use this article as long as the work is properly cited, the use is educational and not for profit, and the work is not altered.

  17. Exact model reduction of combinatorial reaction networks

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Fey Dirk

    2008-08-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background Receptors and scaffold proteins usually possess a high number of distinct binding domains inducing the formation of large multiprotein signaling complexes. Due to combinatorial reasons the number of distinguishable species grows exponentially with the number of binding domains and can easily reach several millions. Even by including only a limited number of components and binding domains the resulting models are very large and hardly manageable. A novel model reduction technique allows the significant reduction and modularization of these models. Results We introduce methods that extend and complete the already introduced approach. For instance, we provide techniques to handle the formation of multi-scaffold complexes as well as receptor dimerization. Furthermore, we discuss a new modeling approach that allows the direct generation of exactly reduced model structures. The developed methods are used to reduce a model of EGF and insulin receptor crosstalk comprising 5,182 ordinary differential equations (ODEs to a model with 87 ODEs. Conclusion The methods, presented in this contribution, significantly enhance the available methods to exactly reduce models of combinatorial reaction networks.

  18. Microbial diversity and metabolic networks in acid mine drainage habitats

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Celia eMendez-Garcia

    2015-05-01

    Full Text Available Acid mine drainage (AMD emplacements are low-complexity natural systems. Low-pH conditions appear to be the main factor underlying the limited diversity of the microbial populations thriving in these environments, although temperature, ionic composition, total organic carbon and dissolved oxygen are also considered to significantly influence their microbial life. This natural reduction in diversity driven by extreme conditions was reflected in several studies on the microbial populations inhabiting the various micro-environments present in such ecosystems. Early studies based on the physiology of the autochthonous microbiota and the growing success of omics technologies have enabled a better understanding of microbial ecology and function in low-pH mine outflows; however, complementary omics-derived data should be included to completely describe their microbial ecology. Furthermore, recent updates on the distribution of eukaryotes and ultra-micro-archaea demand their inclusion in the microbial characterisation of AMD systems. In this review, we present a complete overview of the bacterial, archaeal (including ultra-micro-archaeal and eukaryotic diversity in these ecosystems and include a thorough depiction of the metabolism and element cycling in AMD habitats. We also review different metabolic network structures at the organismal level, which is necessary to disentangle the role of each member of the AMD communities described thus far.

  19. Machine Learning Methods for Analysis of Metabolic Data and Metabolic Pathway Modeling.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cuperlovic-Culf, Miroslava

    2018-01-11

    Machine learning uses experimental data to optimize clustering or classification of samples or features, or to develop, augment or verify models that can be used to predict behavior or properties of systems. It is expected that machine learning will help provide actionable knowledge from a variety of big data including metabolomics data, as well as results of metabolism models. A variety of machine learning methods has been applied in bioinformatics and metabolism analyses including self-organizing maps, support vector machines, the kernel machine, Bayesian networks or fuzzy logic. To a lesser extent, machine learning has also been utilized to take advantage of the increasing availability of genomics and metabolomics data for the optimization of metabolic network models and their analysis. In this context, machine learning has aided the development of metabolic networks, the calculation of parameters for stoichiometric and kinetic models, as well as the analysis of major features in the model for the optimal application of bioreactors. Examples of this very interesting, albeit highly complex, application of machine learning for metabolism modeling will be the primary focus of this review presenting several different types of applications for model optimization, parameter determination or system analysis using models, as well as the utilization of several different types of machine learning technologies.

  20. Machine Learning Methods for Analysis of Metabolic Data and Metabolic Pathway Modeling

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cuperlovic-Culf, Miroslava

    2018-01-01

    Machine learning uses experimental data to optimize clustering or classification of samples or features, or to develop, augment or verify models that can be used to predict behavior or properties of systems. It is expected that machine learning will help provide actionable knowledge from a variety of big data including metabolomics data, as well as results of metabolism models. A variety of machine learning methods has been applied in bioinformatics and metabolism analyses including self-organizing maps, support vector machines, the kernel machine, Bayesian networks or fuzzy logic. To a lesser extent, machine learning has also been utilized to take advantage of the increasing availability of genomics and metabolomics data for the optimization of metabolic network models and their analysis. In this context, machine learning has aided the development of metabolic networks, the calculation of parameters for stoichiometric and kinetic models, as well as the analysis of major features in the model for the optimal application of bioreactors. Examples of this very interesting, albeit highly complex, application of machine learning for metabolism modeling will be the primary focus of this review presenting several different types of applications for model optimization, parameter determination or system analysis using models, as well as the utilization of several different types of machine learning technologies. PMID:29324649

  1. Exponential Stability for Impulsive BAM Neural Networks with Time-Varying Delays and Reaction-Diffusion Terms

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Qiankun Song

    2007-06-01

    Full Text Available Impulsive bidirectional associative memory neural network model with time-varying delays and reaction-diffusion terms is considered. Several sufficient conditions ensuring the existence, uniqueness, and global exponential stability of equilibrium point for the addressed neural network are derived by M-matrix theory, analytic methods, and inequality techniques. Moreover, the exponential convergence rate index is estimated, which depends on the system parameters. The obtained results in this paper are less restrictive than previously known criteria. Two examples are given to show the effectiveness of the obtained results.

  2. Exponential Stability for Impulsive BAM Neural Networks with Time-Varying Delays and Reaction-Diffusion Terms

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Cao Jinde

    2007-01-01

    Full Text Available Impulsive bidirectional associative memory neural network model with time-varying delays and reaction-diffusion terms is considered. Several sufficient conditions ensuring the existence, uniqueness, and global exponential stability of equilibrium point for the addressed neural network are derived by M-matrix theory, analytic methods, and inequality techniques. Moreover, the exponential convergence rate index is estimated, which depends on the system parameters. The obtained results in this paper are less restrictive than previously known criteria. Two examples are given to show the effectiveness of the obtained results.

  3. Simulation and Statistical Inference of Stochastic Reaction Networks with Applications to Epidemic Models

    KAUST Repository

    Moraes, Alvaro

    2015-01-01

    Epidemics have shaped, sometimes more than wars and natural disasters, demo- graphic aspects of human populations around the world, their health habits and their economies. Ebola and the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) are clear and current examples of potential hazards at planetary scale. During the spread of an epidemic disease, there are phenomena, like the sudden extinction of the epidemic, that can not be captured by deterministic models. As a consequence, stochastic models have been proposed during the last decades. A typical forward problem in the stochastic setting could be the approximation of the expected number of infected individuals found in one month from now. On the other hand, a typical inverse problem could be, given a discretely observed set of epidemiological data, infer the transmission rate of the epidemic or its basic reproduction number. Markovian epidemic models are stochastic models belonging to a wide class of pure jump processes known as Stochastic Reaction Networks (SRNs), that are intended to describe the time evolution of interacting particle systems where one particle interacts with the others through a finite set of reaction channels. SRNs have been mainly developed to model biochemical reactions but they also have applications in neural networks, virus kinetics, and dynamics of social networks, among others. 4 This PhD thesis is focused on novel fast simulation algorithms and statistical inference methods for SRNs. Our novel Multi-level Monte Carlo (MLMC) hybrid simulation algorithms provide accurate estimates of expected values of a given observable of SRNs at a prescribed final time. They are designed to control the global approximation error up to a user-selected accuracy and up to a certain confidence level, and with near optimal computational work. We also present novel dual-weighted residual expansions for fast estimation of weak and strong errors arising from the MLMC methodology. Regarding the statistical inference

  4. PPAR? population shift produces disease-related changes in molecular networks associated with metabolic syndrome

    OpenAIRE

    Jurkowski, W; Roomp, K; Crespo, I; Schneider, J G; del Sol, A

    2011-01-01

    Peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor gamma (PPARγ) is a key regulator of adipocyte differentiation and has an important role in metabolic syndrome. Phosphorylation of the receptor's ligand-binding domain at serine 273 has been shown to change the expression of a large number of genes implicated in obesity. The difference in gene expression seen when comparing wild-type phosphorylated with mutant non-phosphorylated PPARγ may have important consequences for the cellular molecular network,...

  5. Building a mechanistic biogeochemical reaction network for upscaling : Characterization of mass transport limitation between regions of hydrolysis and methanogenesis

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Van Turnhout, A.G.; Kleerebezem, R.; Heimovaara, T.J.

    2015-01-01

    In this study, we aim to validate the reaction network with an idealized experiment. We want to show that 1) rate controlling parameters are identifiable from the measured data by inverse modeling, and 2) that this network is able to predict the measured emissions in the experiment given the initial

  6. Genome-scale modeling for metabolic engineering.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Simeonidis, Evangelos; Price, Nathan D

    2015-03-01

    We focus on the application of constraint-based methodologies and, more specifically, flux balance analysis in the field of metabolic engineering, and enumerate recent developments and successes of the field. We also review computational frameworks that have been developed with the express purpose of automatically selecting optimal gene deletions for achieving improved production of a chemical of interest. The application of flux balance analysis methods in rational metabolic engineering requires a metabolic network reconstruction and a corresponding in silico metabolic model for the microorganism in question. For this reason, we additionally present a brief overview of automated reconstruction techniques. Finally, we emphasize the importance of integrating metabolic networks with regulatory information-an area which we expect will become increasingly important for metabolic engineering-and present recent developments in the field of metabolic and regulatory integration.

  7. RxnFinder: biochemical reaction search engines using molecular structures, molecular fragments and reaction similarity.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hu, Qian-Nan; Deng, Zhe; Hu, Huanan; Cao, Dong-Sheng; Liang, Yi-Zeng

    2011-09-01

    Biochemical reactions play a key role to help sustain life and allow cells to grow. RxnFinder was developed to search biochemical reactions from KEGG reaction database using three search criteria: molecular structures, molecular fragments and reaction similarity. RxnFinder is helpful to get reference reactions for biosynthesis and xenobiotics metabolism. RxnFinder is freely available via: http://sdd.whu.edu.cn/rxnfinder. qnhu@whu.edu.cn.

  8. Model-based design of bistable cell factories for metabolic engineering.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Srinivasan, Shyam; Cluett, William R; Mahadevan, Radhakrishnan

    2018-04-15

    Metabolism can exhibit dynamic phenomena like bistability due to the presence of regulatory motifs like the positive feedback loop. As cell factories, microorganisms with bistable metabolism can have a high and a low product flux at the two stable steady states, respectively. The exclusion of metabolic regulation and network dynamics limits the ability of pseudo-steady state stoichiometric models to detect the presence of bistability, and reliably assess the outcomes of design perturbations to metabolic networks. Using kinetic models of metabolism, we assess the change in the bistable characteristics of the network, and suggest designs based on perturbations to the positive feedback loop to enable the network to produce at its theoretical maximum rate. We show that the most optimal production design in parameter space, for a small bistable metabolic network, may exist at the boundary of the bistable region separating it from the monostable region of low product fluxes. The results of our analysis can be broadly applied to other bistable metabolic networks with similar positive feedback network topologies. This can complement existing model-based design strategies by providing a smaller number of feasible designs that need to be tested in vivo. http://lmse.biozone.utoronto.ca/downloads/. krishna.mahadevan@utoronto.ca. Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.

  9. Effects of introducing heterologous pathways on microbial metabolism with respect to metabolic optimality

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Kim, Hyun Uk; Kim, Byoungjin; Seung, Do Young

    2014-01-01

    reactions are more frequently introduced into various microbial hosts. The genome-scale metabolic simulations of Escherichia coli strains engineered to produce 1,4-butanediol, 1,3-propanediol, and amorphadiene suggest that microbial metabolism shows much different responses to the introduced heterologous...... reactions in a strain-specific manner than typical gene knockouts in terms of the energetic status (e.g., ATP and biomass generation) and chemical production capacity. The 1,4-butanediol and 1,3-propanediol producers showed greater metabolic optimality than the wild-type strains and gene knockout mutants...... for the energetic status, while the amorphadiene producer was metabolically less optimal. For the optimal chemical production capacity, additional gene knockouts were most effective for the strain producing 1,3-propanediol, but not for the one producing 1,4-butanediol. These observations suggest that strains having...

  10. Design of an Adaptive-Neural Network Attitude Controller of a Satellite using Reaction Wheels

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Abbas Ajorkar

    2015-04-01

    Full Text Available In this paper, an adaptive attitude control algorithm is developed based on neural network for a satellite using four reaction wheels in a tetrahedron configuration. Then, an attitude control based on feedback linearization control has been designed and uncertainties in the moment of inertia matrix and disturbances torque have been considered. In order to eliminate the effect of these uncertainties, a multilayer neural network with back-propagation law is designed. In this structure, the parameters of the moment of inertia matrix and external disturbances are estimated and used in feedback linearization control law. Finally, the performance of the designed attitude controller is investigated by several simulations.

  11. Metadislocation reactions and metadislocation networks in the complex metallic alloy ξ'-Al-Pd-Mn

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Heggen, Marc; Feuerbacher, Michael

    2005-01-01

    Metadislocations are novel structural defects firstly observed in the complex metallic alloy ξ'-Al-Pd-Mn. We present a transmission electron microscopy study on metadislocation reactions and networks. It is shown that metadislocations can dissociate into partials, which leads to a decrease of the elastic line energy. Connected groups of metadislocations can assume large and complex network structures with large total Burgers vectors. However, the local elastic strain at the individual metadislocation cores as well as the fault-plane energies remain small. By this mechanism, effective large Burgers vectors, contributing massively to plastic strain, can be distributed over a large portion of the material

  12. Genome-scale metabolic analysis of Clostridium thermocellum for bioethanol production

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Brooks J Paul

    2010-03-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background Microorganisms possess diverse metabolic capabilities that can potentially be leveraged for efficient production of biofuels. Clostridium thermocellum (ATCC 27405 is a thermophilic anaerobe that is both cellulolytic and ethanologenic, meaning that it can directly use the plant sugar, cellulose, and biochemically convert it to ethanol. A major challenge in using microorganisms for chemical production is the need to modify the organism to increase production efficiency. The process of properly engineering an organism is typically arduous. Results Here we present a genome-scale model of C. thermocellum metabolism, iSR432, for the purpose of establishing a computational tool to study the metabolic network of C. thermocellum and facilitate efforts to engineer C. thermocellum for biofuel production. The model consists of 577 reactions involving 525 intracellular metabolites, 432 genes, and a proteomic-based representation of a cellulosome. The process of constructing this metabolic model led to suggested annotation refinements for 27 genes and identification of areas of metabolism requiring further study. The accuracy of the iSR432 model was tested using experimental growth and by-product secretion data for growth on cellobiose and fructose. Analysis using this model captures the relationship between the reduction-oxidation state of the cell and ethanol secretion and allowed for prediction of gene deletions and environmental conditions that would increase ethanol production. Conclusions By incorporating genomic sequence data, network topology, and experimental measurements of enzyme activities and metabolite fluxes, we have generated a model that is reasonably accurate at predicting the cellular phenotype of C. thermocellum and establish a strong foundation for rational strain design. In addition, we are able to draw some important conclusions regarding the underlying metabolic mechanisms for observed behaviors of C. thermocellum

  13. Mittag-Leffler synchronization of fractional neural networks with time-varying delays and reaction-diffusion terms using impulsive and linear controllers.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Stamova, Ivanka; Stamov, Gani

    2017-12-01

    In this paper, we propose a fractional-order neural network system with time-varying delays and reaction-diffusion terms. We first develop a new Mittag-Leffler synchronization strategy for the controlled nodes via impulsive controllers. Using the fractional Lyapunov method sufficient conditions are given. We also study the global Mittag-Leffler synchronization of two identical fractional impulsive reaction-diffusion neural networks using linear controllers, which was an open problem even for integer-order models. Since the Mittag-Leffler stability notion is a generalization of the exponential stability concept for fractional-order systems, our results extend and improve the exponential impulsive control theory of neural network system with time-varying delays and reaction-diffusion terms to the fractional-order case. The fractional-order derivatives allow us to model the long-term memory in the neural networks, and thus the present research provides with a conceptually straightforward mathematical representation of rather complex processes. Illustrative examples are presented to show the validity of the obtained results. We show that by means of appropriate impulsive controllers we can realize the stability goal and to control the qualitative behavior of the states. An image encryption scheme is extended using fractional derivatives. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  14. Ecological relationship analysis of the urban metabolic system of Beijing, China

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Li Shengsheng; Zhang Yan; Yang Zhifeng; Liu Hong; Zhang Jinyun

    2012-01-01

    Cities can be modelled as giant organisms, with their own metabolic processes, and can therefore be studied using the same tools used for biological metabolic systems. The complicated distribution of compartments within these systems and the functional relationships among them define the system's network structure. Taking Beijing as an example, we divided the city's internal system into metabolic compartments, then used ecological network analysis to calculate a comprehensive utility matrix for the flows between compartments within Beijing's metabolic system from 1998 to 2007 and to identify the corresponding functional relationships among the system's compartments. Our results show how ecological network analysis, utility analysis, and relationship analysis can be used to discover the implied ecological relationships within a metabolic system, thereby providing insights into the system's internal metabolic processes. Such analyses provide scientific support for urban ecological management. - Highlights: ► Urban metabolic processes can be analyzed by treating cities as superorganisms. ► We developed an ecological network model for an urban system. ► We studied the system's network relationships using ecological network analysis. ► We developed indices for judging the system's synergism and degree of stability. - Using Beijing as an example of an urban superorganism, we used ecological network analysis to describe the ecological relationships among the urban metabolic system's compartments.

  15. Metal phosphonate coordination networks and frameworks as precursors of electrocatalysts for the hydrogen and oxygen evolution reactions

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zhang, Rui; El-Refaei, Sayed M.; Russo, Patrícia A.; Pinna, Nicola

    2018-05-01

    The hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) play key roles in the conversion of energy derived from renewable energy sources into chemical energy. Efficient, robust, and inexpensive electrocatalysts are necessary for driving these reactions at high rates at low overpotentials and minimize energetic losses. Recently, electrocatalysts derived from hybrid metal phosphonate compounds have shown high activity for the HER or OER. We review here the utilization of metal phosphonate coordination networks and metal-organic frameworks as precursors/templates for transition-metal phosphides, phosphates, or oxyhydroxides generated in situ in alkaline solutions, and their electrocatalytic performance in HER or OER.

  16. Metabolic flux distributions in Corynebacterium glutamicum during growth and lysine overproduction. Reprinted from Biotechnology and Bioengineering, Vol. 41, Pp 633-646 (1993).

    Science.gov (United States)

    Vallino, J J; Stephanopoulos, G

    2000-03-20

    The two main contributions of this article are the solidification of Corynebacterium glutamicum biochemistry guided by bioreaction network analysis, and the determination of basal metabolic flux distributions during growth and lysine synthesis. Employed methodology makes use of stoichiometrically based mass balances to determine flux distributions in the C. glutamicum metabolic network. Presented are a brief description of the methodology, a thorough literature review of glutamic acid bacteria biochemistry, and specific results obtained through a combination of fermentation studies and analysis-directed intracellular assays. The latter include the findings of the lack of activity of glyoxylate shunt, and that phosphoenolpyruvate carboxylase (PPC) is the only anaplerotic reaction expressed in C. glutamicum cultivated on glucose minimal media. Network simplifications afforded by the above findings facilitated the determination of metabolic flux distributions under a variety of culture conditions and led to the following conclusions. Both the pentose phosphate pathway and PPC support significant fluxes during growth and lysine overproduction, and that flux partitioning at the glucosa-6-phosphate branch point does not appear to limit lysine synthesis. Copyright 1993 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

  17. Quantifying the metabolic capabilities of engineered Zymomonas mobilis using linear programming analysis

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Tsantili Ivi C

    2007-03-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background The need for discovery of alternative, renewable, environmentally friendly energy sources and the development of cost-efficient, "clean" methods for their conversion into higher fuels becomes imperative. Ethanol, whose significance as fuel has dramatically increased in the last decade, can be produced from hexoses and pentoses through microbial fermentation. Importantly, plant biomass, if appropriately and effectively decomposed, is a potential inexpensive and highly renewable source of the hexose and pentose mixture. Recently, the engineered (to also catabolize pentoses anaerobic bacterium Zymomonas mobilis has been widely discussed among the most promising microorganisms for the microbial production of ethanol fuel. However, Z. mobilis genome having been fully sequenced in 2005, there is still a small number of published studies of its in vivo physiology and limited use of the metabolic engineering experimental and computational toolboxes to understand its metabolic pathway interconnectivity and regulation towards the optimization of its hexose and pentose fermentation into ethanol. Results In this paper, we reconstructed the metabolic network of the engineered Z. mobilis to a level that it could be modelled using the metabolic engineering methodologies. We then used linear programming (LP analysis and identified the Z. mobilis metabolic boundaries with respect to various biological objectives, these boundaries being determined only by Z. mobilis network's stoichiometric connectivity. This study revealed the essential for bacterial growth reactions and elucidated the association between the metabolic pathways, especially regarding main product and byproduct formation. More specifically, the study indicated that ethanol and biomass production depend directly on anaerobic respiration stoichiometry and activity. Thus, enhanced understanding and improved means for analyzing anaerobic respiration and redox potential in vivo are

  18. Report on the IAEA technical meeting on network of nuclear reaction data centres

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Schwerer, O [IAEA Nuclear Data Section, Vienna (Austria)

    2006-12-15

    An IAEA Technical Meeting on the Network of Nuclear Reaction Data Centres (biennial Data Centre Heads Meeting) was held at IAEA Headquarters, Vienna, Austria, from 25 to 28 September 2006. The meeting was attended by 19 participants from 10 cooperating data centres of six Member States and two international organizations. A summary of the meeting is given in this report, along with the conclusions, actions, and status reports of the participating data centres. (author)

  19. Report on the IAEA technical meeting on network of nuclear reaction data centres

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Schwerer, O.

    2006-12-01

    An IAEA Technical Meeting on the Network of Nuclear Reaction Data Centres (biennial Data Centre Heads Meeting) was held at IAEA Headquarters, Vienna, Austria, from 25 to 28 September 2006. The meeting was attended by 19 participants from 10 cooperating data centres of six Member States and two international organizations. A summary of the meeting is given in this report, along with the conclusions, actions, and status reports of the participating data centres. (author)

  20. Reaction Decoder Tool (RDT): extracting features from chemical reactions.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Rahman, Syed Asad; Torrance, Gilliean; Baldacci, Lorenzo; Martínez Cuesta, Sergio; Fenninger, Franz; Gopal, Nimish; Choudhary, Saket; May, John W; Holliday, Gemma L; Steinbeck, Christoph; Thornton, Janet M

    2016-07-01

    Extracting chemical features like Atom-Atom Mapping (AAM), Bond Changes (BCs) and Reaction Centres from biochemical reactions helps us understand the chemical composition of enzymatic reactions. Reaction Decoder is a robust command line tool, which performs this task with high accuracy. It supports standard chemical input/output exchange formats i.e. RXN/SMILES, computes AAM, highlights BCs and creates images of the mapped reaction. This aids in the analysis of metabolic pathways and the ability to perform comparative studies of chemical reactions based on these features. This software is implemented in Java, supported on Windows, Linux and Mac OSX, and freely available at https://github.com/asad/ReactionDecoder : asad@ebi.ac.uk or s9asad@gmail.com. © The Author 2016. Published by Oxford University Press.

  1. Network Biology (http://www.iaees.org/publications/journals/nb/online-version.asp

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    networkbiology@iaees.org

    Full Text Available Network Biology ISSN 2220-8879 URL: http://www.iaees.org/publications/journals/nb/online-version.asp RSS: http://www.iaees.org/publications/journals/nb/rss.xml E-mail: networkbiology@iaees.org Editor-in-Chief: WenJun Zhang Aims and Scope NETWORK BIOLOGY (ISSN 2220-8879; CODEN NBEICS is an open access, peer-reviewed international journal that considers scientific articles in all different areas of network biology. It is the transactions of the International Society of Network Biology. It dedicates to the latest advances in network biology. The goal of this journal is to keep a record of the state-of-the-art research and promote the research work in these fast moving areas. The topics to be covered by Network Biology include, but are not limited to: •Theories, algorithms and programs of network analysis •Innovations and applications of biological networks •Ecological networks, food webs and natural equilibrium •Co-evolution, co-extinction, biodiversity conservation •Metabolic networks, protein-protein interaction networks, biochemical reaction networks, gene networks, transcriptional regulatory networks, cell cycle networks, phylogenetic networks, network motifs •Physiological networksNetwork regulation of metabolic processes, human diseases and ecological systems •Social networks, epidemiological networks •System complexity, self-organized systems, emergence of biological systems, agent-based modeling, individual-based modeling, neural network modeling, and other network-based modeling, etc. We are also interested in short communications that clearly address a specific issue or completely present a new ecological network, food web, or metabolic or gene network, etc. Authors can submit their works to the email box of this journal, networkbiology@iaees.org. All manuscripts submitted to this journal must be previously unpublished and may not be considered for publication elsewhere at any time during review period of this journal

  2. Global Metabolic Reconstruction and Metabolic Gene Evolution in the Cattle Genome

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kim, Woonsu; Park, Hyesun; Seo, Seongwon

    2016-01-01

    The sequence of cattle genome provided a valuable opportunity to systematically link genetic and metabolic traits of cattle. The objectives of this study were 1) to reconstruct genome-scale cattle-specific metabolic pathways based on the most recent and updated cattle genome build and 2) to identify duplicated metabolic genes in the cattle genome for better understanding of metabolic adaptations in cattle. A bioinformatic pipeline of an organism for amalgamating genomic annotations from multiple sources was updated. Using this, an amalgamated cattle genome database based on UMD_3.1, was created. The amalgamated cattle genome database is composed of a total of 33,292 genes: 19,123 consensus genes between NCBI and Ensembl databases, 8,410 and 5,493 genes only found in NCBI or Ensembl, respectively, and 266 genes from NCBI scaffolds. A metabolic reconstruction of the cattle genome and cattle pathway genome database (PGDB) was also developed using Pathway Tools, followed by an intensive manual curation. The manual curation filled or revised 68 pathway holes, deleted 36 metabolic pathways, and added 23 metabolic pathways. Consequently, the curated cattle PGDB contains 304 metabolic pathways, 2,460 reactions including 2,371 enzymatic reactions, and 4,012 enzymes. Furthermore, this study identified eight duplicated genes in 12 metabolic pathways in the cattle genome compared to human and mouse. Some of these duplicated genes are related with specific hormone biosynthesis and detoxifications. The updated genome-scale metabolic reconstruction is a useful tool for understanding biology and metabolic characteristics in cattle. There has been significant improvements in the quality of cattle genome annotations and the MetaCyc database. The duplicated metabolic genes in the cattle genome compared to human and mouse implies evolutionary changes in the cattle genome and provides a useful information for further research on understanding metabolic adaptations of cattle. PMID

  3. Stochastic exponential stability of the delayed reaction-diffusion recurrent neural networks with Markovian jumping parameters

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Wang Linshan; Zhang Zhe; Wang Yangfan

    2008-01-01

    Some criteria for the global stochastic exponential stability of the delayed reaction-diffusion recurrent neural networks with Markovian jumping parameters are presented. The jumping parameters considered here are generated from a continuous-time discrete-state homogeneous Markov process, which are governed by a Markov process with discrete and finite state space. By employing a new Lyapunov-Krasovskii functional, a linear matrix inequality (LMI) approach is developed to establish some easy-to-test criteria of global exponential stability in the mean square for the stochastic neural networks. The criteria are computationally efficient, since they are in the forms of some linear matrix inequalities

  4. Metabolism and resistance of Fusarium spp. to the manzamine alkaloids via a putative retro pictet-spengler reaction and utility of the rational design of antimalarial and antifungal agents.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kasanah, Noer; Farr, Lorelei Lucas; Gholipour, Abbas; Wedge, David E; Hamann, Mark T

    2014-08-01

    As a part of our continuing investigation of the manzamine alkaloids we studied the in vitro activity of the β-carboline containing manzamine alkaloids against Fusarium solani, Fusarium oxysporium, and Fusarium proliferatum by employing several bioassay techniques including one-dimensional direct bioautography, dilution, and plate susceptibility, and microtiter broth assays. In addition, we also studied the metabolism of the manzamine alkaloids by Fusarium spp. in order to facilitate the redesign of the compounds to prevent resistance of Fusarium spp. through metabolism. The present research reveals that the manzamine alkaloids are inactive against Fusarium spp. and the fungi transform manzamines via hydrolysis, reduction, and a retro Pictet-Spengler reaction. This is the first report to demonstrate an enzymatically retro Pictet-Spengler reaction. The results of this study reveal the utility of the rational design of metabolically stable antifungal agents from this class and the development of manzamine alkaloids as antimalarial drugs through the utilization of Fusarium's metabolic products to reconstruct the molecule.

  5. Predicting adverse drug reaction profiles by integrating protein interaction networks with drug structures.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Huang, Liang-Chin; Wu, Xiaogang; Chen, Jake Y

    2013-01-01

    The prediction of adverse drug reactions (ADRs) has become increasingly important, due to the rising concern on serious ADRs that can cause drugs to fail to reach or stay in the market. We proposed a framework for predicting ADR profiles by integrating protein-protein interaction (PPI) networks with drug structures. We compared ADR prediction performances over 18 ADR categories through four feature groups-only drug targets, drug targets with PPI networks, drug structures, and drug targets with PPI networks plus drug structures. The results showed that the integration of PPI networks and drug structures can significantly improve the ADR prediction performance. The median AUC values for the four groups were 0.59, 0.61, 0.65, and 0.70. We used the protein features in the best two models, "Cardiac disorders" (median-AUC: 0.82) and "Psychiatric disorders" (median-AUC: 0.76), to build ADR-specific PPI networks with literature supports. For validation, we examined 30 drugs withdrawn from the U.S. market to see if our approach can predict their ADR profiles and explain why they were withdrawn. Except for three drugs having ADRs in the categories we did not predict, 25 out of 27 withdrawn drugs (92.6%) having severe ADRs were successfully predicted by our approach. © 2012 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.

  6. Application of Enzyme Coupling Reactions to Shift Thermodynamically Limited Biocatalytic Reactions

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Abu, Rohana; Woodley, John M.

    2015-01-01

    , it can be challenging to combine several engineered enzymes in vitro for the conversion of non-natural substrates. In this mini-review we focus on enzyme coupling reactions as a tool to alleviate thermodynamic constraints in synthetically useful biocatalytic reactions. The implications of thermodynamic...... shift the equilibrium of otherwise thermodynamically unfavourable reactions to give a higher conversion of the target product. By coupling an energetically unfavourable reaction with a more favourable one, the multi-enzyme cascade mimics the approach taken in nature in metabolic pathways. Nevertheless...

  7. Looking for chemical reaction networks exhibiting a drift along a manifold of marginally stable states.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Brogioli, Doriano

    2013-02-07

    I recently reported some examples of mass-action equations that have a continuous manifold of marginally stable stationary states [Brogioli, D., 2010. Marginally stable chemical systems as precursors of life. Phys. Rev. Lett. 105, 058102; Brogioli, D., 2011. Marginal stability in chemical systems and its relevance in the origin of life. Phys. Rev. E 84, 031931]. The corresponding chemical reaction networks show nonclassical effects, i.e. a violation of the mass-action equations, under the effect of the concentration fluctuations: the chemical system drifts along the marginally stable states. I proposed that this effect is potentially involved in abiogenesis. In the present paper, I analyze the mathematical properties of mass-action equations of marginally stable chemical reaction networks. The marginal stability implies that the mass-action equations obey some conservation law; I show that the mathematical properties of the conserved quantity characterize the motion along the marginally stable stationary state manifold, i.e. they allow to predict if the fluctuations give rise to a random walk or a drift under the effect of concentration fluctuations. Moreover, I show that the presence of the drift along the manifold of marginally stable stationary-states is a critical property, i.e. at least one of the reaction constants must be fine tuned in order to obtain the drift. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  8. Equal opportunity for low-degree network nodes: a PageRank-based method for protein target identification in metabolic graphs.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Dániel Bánky

    Full Text Available Biological network data, such as metabolic-, signaling- or physical interaction graphs of proteins are increasingly available in public repositories for important species. Tools for the quantitative analysis of these networks are being developed today. Protein network-based drug target identification methods usually return protein hubs with large degrees in the networks as potentially important targets. Some known, important protein targets, however, are not hubs at all, and perturbing protein hubs in these networks may have several unwanted physiological effects, due to their interaction with numerous partners. Here, we show a novel method applicable in networks with directed edges (such as metabolic networks that compensates for the low degree (non-hub vertices in the network, and identifies important nodes, regardless of their hub properties. Our method computes the PageRank for the nodes of the network, and divides the PageRank by the in-degree (i.e., the number of incoming edges of the node. This quotient is the same in all nodes in an undirected graph (even for large- and low-degree nodes, that is, for hubs and non-hubs as well, but may differ significantly from node to node in directed graphs. We suggest to assign importance to non-hub nodes with large PageRank/in-degree quotient. Consequently, our method gives high scores to nodes with large PageRank, relative to their degrees: therefore non-hub important nodes can easily be identified in large networks. We demonstrate that these relatively high PageRank scores have biological relevance: the method correctly finds numerous already validated drug targets in distinct organisms (Mycobacterium tuberculosis, Plasmodium falciparum and MRSA Staphylococcus aureus, and consequently, it may suggest new possible protein targets as well. Additionally, our scoring method was not chosen arbitrarily: its value for all nodes of all undirected graphs is constant; therefore its high value captures

  9. Equal opportunity for low-degree network nodes: a PageRank-based method for protein target identification in metabolic graphs.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bánky, Dániel; Iván, Gábor; Grolmusz, Vince

    2013-01-01

    Biological network data, such as metabolic-, signaling- or physical interaction graphs of proteins are increasingly available in public repositories for important species. Tools for the quantitative analysis of these networks are being developed today. Protein network-based drug target identification methods usually return protein hubs with large degrees in the networks as potentially important targets. Some known, important protein targets, however, are not hubs at all, and perturbing protein hubs in these networks may have several unwanted physiological effects, due to their interaction with numerous partners. Here, we show a novel method applicable in networks with directed edges (such as metabolic networks) that compensates for the low degree (non-hub) vertices in the network, and identifies important nodes, regardless of their hub properties. Our method computes the PageRank for the nodes of the network, and divides the PageRank by the in-degree (i.e., the number of incoming edges) of the node. This quotient is the same in all nodes in an undirected graph (even for large- and low-degree nodes, that is, for hubs and non-hubs as well), but may differ significantly from node to node in directed graphs. We suggest to assign importance to non-hub nodes with large PageRank/in-degree quotient. Consequently, our method gives high scores to nodes with large PageRank, relative to their degrees: therefore non-hub important nodes can easily be identified in large networks. We demonstrate that these relatively high PageRank scores have biological relevance: the method correctly finds numerous already validated drug targets in distinct organisms (Mycobacterium tuberculosis, Plasmodium falciparum and MRSA Staphylococcus aureus), and consequently, it may suggest new possible protein targets as well. Additionally, our scoring method was not chosen arbitrarily: its value for all nodes of all undirected graphs is constant; therefore its high value captures importance in the

  10. Concepts, challenges, and successes in modeling thermodynamics of metabolism.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cannon, William R

    2014-01-01

    The modeling of the chemical reactions involved in metabolism is a daunting task. Ideally, the modeling of metabolism would use kinetic simulations, but these simulations require knowledge of the thousands of rate constants involved in the reactions. The measurement of rate constants is very labor intensive, and hence rate constants for most enzymatic reactions are not available. Consequently, constraint-based flux modeling has been the method of choice because it does not require the use of the rate constants of the law of mass action. However, this convenience also limits the predictive power of constraint-based approaches in that the law of mass action is used only as a constraint, making it difficult to predict metabolite levels or energy requirements of pathways. An alternative to both of these approaches is to model metabolism using simulations of states rather than simulations of reactions, in which the state is defined as the set of all metabolite counts or concentrations. While kinetic simulations model reactions based on the likelihood of the reaction derived from the law of mass action, states are modeled based on likelihood ratios of mass action. Both approaches provide information on the energy requirements of metabolic reactions and pathways. However, modeling states rather than reactions has the advantage that the parameters needed to model states (chemical potentials) are much easier to determine than the parameters needed to model reactions (rate constants). Herein, we discuss recent results, assumptions, and issues in using simulations of state to model metabolism.

  11. Loss of variation of state detected in soybean metabolic and human myelomonocytic leukaemia cell transcriptional networks under external stimuli

    KAUST Repository

    Sakata, Katsumi

    2016-10-24

    Soybean (Glycine max) is sensitive to flooding stress, and flood damage at the seedling stage is a barrier to growth. We constructed two mathematical models of the soybean metabolic network, a control model and a flooded model, from metabolic profiles in soybean plants. We simulated the metabolic profiles with perturbations before and after the flooding stimulus using the two models. We measured the variation of state that the system could maintain from a state–space description of the simulated profiles. The results showed a loss of variation of state during the flooding response in the soybean plants. Loss of variation of state was also observed in a human myelomonocytic leukaemia cell transcriptional network in response to a phorbol-ester stimulus. Thus, we detected a loss of variation of state under external stimuli in two biological systems, regardless of the regulation and stimulus types. Our results suggest that a loss of robustness may occur concurrently with the loss of variation of state in biological systems. We describe the possible applications of the quantity of variation of state in plant genetic engineering and cell biology. Finally, we present a hypothetical “external stimulus-induced information loss” model of biological systems.

  12. Loss of variation of state detected in soybean metabolic and human myelomonocytic leukaemia cell transcriptional networks under external stimuli

    KAUST Repository

    Sakata, Katsumi; Saito, Toshiyuki; Ohyanagi, Hajime; Okumura, Jun; Ishige, Kentaro; Suzuki, Harukazu; Nakamura, Takuji; Komatsu, Setsuko

    2016-01-01

    Soybean (Glycine max) is sensitive to flooding stress, and flood damage at the seedling stage is a barrier to growth. We constructed two mathematical models of the soybean metabolic network, a control model and a flooded model, from metabolic profiles in soybean plants. We simulated the metabolic profiles with perturbations before and after the flooding stimulus using the two models. We measured the variation of state that the system could maintain from a state–space description of the simulated profiles. The results showed a loss of variation of state during the flooding response in the soybean plants. Loss of variation of state was also observed in a human myelomonocytic leukaemia cell transcriptional network in response to a phorbol-ester stimulus. Thus, we detected a loss of variation of state under external stimuli in two biological systems, regardless of the regulation and stimulus types. Our results suggest that a loss of robustness may occur concurrently with the loss of variation of state in biological systems. We describe the possible applications of the quantity of variation of state in plant genetic engineering and cell biology. Finally, we present a hypothetical “external stimulus-induced information loss” model of biological systems.

  13. Flows, scaling, and the control of moment hierarchies for stochastic chemical reaction networks

    Science.gov (United States)

    Smith, Eric; Krishnamurthy, Supriya

    2017-12-01

    Stochastic chemical reaction networks (CRNs) are complex systems that combine the features of concurrent transformation of multiple variables in each elementary reaction event and nonlinear relations between states and their rates of change. Most general results concerning CRNs are limited to restricted cases where a topological characteristic known as deficiency takes a value 0 or 1, implying uniqueness and positivity of steady states and surprising, low-information forms for their associated probability distributions. Here we derive equations of motion for fluctuation moments at all orders for stochastic CRNs at general deficiency. We show, for the standard base case of proportional sampling without replacement (which underlies the mass-action rate law), that the generator of the stochastic process acts on the hierarchy of factorial moments with a finite representation. Whereas simulation of high-order moments for many-particle systems is costly, this representation reduces the solution of moment hierarchies to a complexity comparable to solving a heat equation. At steady states, moment hierarchies for finite CRNs interpolate between low-order and high-order scaling regimes, which may be approximated separately by distributions similar to those for deficiency-zero networks and connected through matched asymptotic expansions. In CRNs with multiple stable or metastable steady states, boundedness of high-order moments provides the starting condition for recursive solution downward to low-order moments, reversing the order usually used to solve moment hierarchies. A basis for a subset of network flows defined by having the same mean-regressing property as the flows in deficiency-zero networks gives the leading contribution to low-order moments in CRNs at general deficiency, in a 1 /n expansion in large particle numbers. Our results give a physical picture of the different informational roles of mean-regressing and non-mean-regressing flows and clarify the dynamical

  14. Summary Report of the Technical Meeting on International Network of Nuclear Reaction Data Centres

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Otsuka, Naohiko

    2013-07-01

    This report summarizes the IAEA Technical Meeting on the International Network of Nuclear Reaction Data Centres, held at the IAEA Headquarters in Vienna, Austria from 23 to 25 April 2013. The meeting was attended by 24 participants representing 13 cooperative centres from 8 Member States and 2 International Organisations. A summary of the meeting is given in this report along with the conclusions and actions. (author)

  15. A review of parameters and heuristics for guiding metabolic pathfinding.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kim, Sarah M; Peña, Matthew I; Moll, Mark; Bennett, George N; Kavraki, Lydia E

    2017-09-15

    Recent developments in metabolic engineering have led to the successful biosynthesis of valuable products, such as the precursor of the antimalarial compound, artemisinin, and opioid precursor, thebaine. Synthesizing these traditionally plant-derived compounds in genetically modified yeast cells introduces the possibility of significantly reducing the total time and resources required for their production, and in turn, allows these valuable compounds to become cheaper and more readily available. Most biosynthesis pathways used in metabolic engineering applications have been discovered manually, requiring a tedious search of existing literature and metabolic databases. However, the recent rapid development of available metabolic information has enabled the development of automated approaches for identifying novel pathways. Computer-assisted pathfinding has the potential to save biochemists time in the initial discovery steps of metabolic engineering. In this paper, we review the parameters and heuristics used to guide the search in recent pathfinding algorithms. These parameters and heuristics capture information on the metabolic network structure, compound structures, reaction features, and organism-specificity of pathways. No one metabolic pathfinding algorithm or search parameter stands out as the best to use broadly for solving the pathfinding problem, as each method and parameter has its own strengths and shortcomings. As assisted pathfinding approaches continue to become more sophisticated, the development of better methods for visualizing pathway results and integrating these results into existing metabolic engineering practices is also important for encouraging wider use of these pathfinding methods.

  16. Metabolite damage and repair in metabolic engineering design.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sun, Jiayi; Jeffryes, James G; Henry, Christopher S; Bruner, Steven D; Hanson, Andrew D

    2017-11-01

    The necessarily sharp focus of metabolic engineering and metabolic synthetic biology on pathways and their fluxes has tended to divert attention from the damaging enzymatic and chemical side-reactions that pathway metabolites can undergo. Although historically overlooked and underappreciated, such metabolite damage reactions are now known to occur throughout metabolism and to generate (formerly enigmatic) peaks detected in metabolomics datasets. It is also now known that metabolite damage is often countered by dedicated repair enzymes that undo or prevent it. Metabolite damage and repair are highly relevant to engineered pathway design: metabolite damage reactions can reduce flux rates and product yields, and repair enzymes can provide robust, host-independent solutions. Herein, after introducing the core principles of metabolite damage and repair, we use case histories to document how damage and repair processes affect efficient operation of engineered pathways - particularly those that are heterologous, non-natural, or cell-free. We then review how metabolite damage reactions can be predicted, how repair reactions can be prospected, and how metabolite damage and repair can be built into genome-scale metabolic models. Lastly, we propose a versatile 'plug and play' set of well-characterized metabolite repair enzymes to solve metabolite damage problems known or likely to occur in metabolic engineering and synthetic biology projects. Copyright © 2017 International Metabolic Engineering Society. All rights reserved.

  17. From dirt to industrial applications: Pseudomonas putida as a Synthetic Biology chassis for hosting harsh biochemical reactions.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Nikel, Pablo I; Chavarría, Max; Danchin, Antoine; de Lorenzo, Víctor

    2016-10-01

    The soil bacterium Pseudomonas putida is endowed with a central carbon metabolic network capable of fulfilling high demands of reducing power. This situation arises from a unique metabolic architecture that encompasses the partial recycling of triose phosphates to hexose phosphates-the so-called EDEMP cycle. In this article, the value of P. putida as a bacterial chassis of choice for contemporary, industrially-oriented metabolic engineering is addressed. The biochemical properties that make this bacterium adequate for hosting biotransformations involving redox reactions as well as toxic compounds and intermediates are discussed. Finally, novel developments and open questions in the continuous quest for an optimal microbial cell factory are presented at the light of current and future needs in the area of biocatalysis. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  18. Novel sterol metabolic network of Trypanosoma brucei procyclic and bloodstream forms

    Science.gov (United States)

    Nes, Craigen R.; Singha, Ujjal K.; Liu, Jialin; Ganapathy, Kulothungan; Villalta, Fernando; Waterman, Michael R.; Lepesheva, Galina I.; Chaudhuri, Minu; Nes, W. David

    2012-01-01

    Trypanosoma brucei is the protozoan parasite that causes African trypanosomiasis, a neglected disease of people and animals. Co-metabolite analysis, labelling studies using [methyl-2H3]-methionine and substrate/product specificities of the cloned 24-SMT (sterol C24-methyltransferase) and 14-SDM (sterol C14-demethylase) from T. brucei afforded an uncommon sterol metabolic network that proceeds from lanosterol and 31-norlanosterol to ETO [ergosta-5,7,25(27)-trien-3β-ol], 24-DTO [dimethyl ergosta-5,7,25(27)-trienol] and ergosterol [ergosta-5,7,22(23)-trienol]. To assess the possible carbon sources of ergosterol biosynthesis, specifically 13C-labelled specimens of lanosterol, acetate, leucine and glucose were administered to T. brucei and the 13C distributions found were in accord with the operation of the acetate–mevalonate pathway, with leucine as an alternative precursor, to ergostenols in either the insect or bloodstream form. In searching for metabolic signatures of procyclic cells, we observed that the 13C-labelling treatments induce fluctuations between the acetyl-CoA (mitochondrial) and sterol (cytosolic) synthetic pathways detected by the progressive increase in 13C-ergosterol production (control sterol synthesis that is further fluctuated in the cytosol, yielding distinct sterol profiles in relation to cell demands on growth. PMID:22176028

  19. Quantitative Assessment of Thermodynamic Constraints on the Solution Space of Genome-Scale Metabolic Models

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hamilton, Joshua J.; Dwivedi, Vivek; Reed, Jennifer L.

    2013-01-01

    Constraint-based methods provide powerful computational techniques to allow understanding and prediction of cellular behavior. These methods rely on physiochemical constraints to eliminate infeasible behaviors from the space of available behaviors. One such constraint is thermodynamic feasibility, the requirement that intracellular flux distributions obey the laws of thermodynamics. The past decade has seen several constraint-based methods that interpret this constraint in different ways, including those that are limited to small networks, rely on predefined reaction directions, and/or neglect the relationship between reaction free energies and metabolite concentrations. In this work, we utilize one such approach, thermodynamics-based metabolic flux analysis (TMFA), to make genome-scale, quantitative predictions about metabolite concentrations and reaction free energies in the absence of prior knowledge of reaction directions, while accounting for uncertainties in thermodynamic estimates. We applied TMFA to a genome-scale network reconstruction of Escherichia coli and examined the effect of thermodynamic constraints on the flux space. We also assessed the predictive performance of TMFA against gene essentiality and quantitative metabolomics data, under both aerobic and anaerobic, and optimal and suboptimal growth conditions. Based on these results, we propose that TMFA is a useful tool for validating phenotypes and generating hypotheses, and that additional types of data and constraints can improve predictions of metabolite concentrations. PMID:23870272

  20. Metabolite damage and repair in metabolic engineering design

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Sun, Jiayi; Jeffryes, James G.; Henry, Christopher S.; Bruner, Steven D.; Hanson, Andrew D.

    2017-11-01

    The necessarily sharp focus of metabolic engineering and metabolic synthetic biology on pathways and their fluxes has tended to divert attention from the damaging enzymatic and chemical side-reactions that pathway metabolites can undergo. Although historically overlooked and underappreciated, such metabolite damage reactions are now known to occur throughout metabolism and to generate (formerly enigmatic) peaks detected in metabolomics datasets. It is also now known that metabolite damage is often countered by dedicated repair enzymes that undo or prevent it. Metabolite damage and repair are highly relevant to engineered pathway design: metabolite damage reactions can reduce flux rates and product yields, and repair enzymes can provide robust, host-independent solutions. Herein, after introducing the core principles of metabolite damage and repair, we use case histories to document how damage and repair processes affect efficient operation of engineered pathways - particularly those that are heterologous, non-natural, or cell-free. We then review how metabolite damage reactions can be predicted, how repair reactions can be prospected, and how metabolite damage and repair can be built into genome-scale metabolic models. Lastly, we propose a versatile 'plug and play' set of well-characterized metabolite repair enzymes to solve metabolite damage problems known or likely to occur in metabolic engineering and synthetic biology projects.

  1. Reconstruction and analysis of a genome-scale metabolic model for Scheffersomyces stipitis

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Balagurunathan Balaji

    2012-02-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background Fermentation of xylose, the major component in hemicellulose, is essential for economic conversion of lignocellulosic biomass to fuels and chemicals. The yeast Scheffersomyces stipitis (formerly known as Pichia stipitis has the highest known native capacity for xylose fermentation and possesses several genes for lignocellulose bioconversion in its genome. Understanding the metabolism of this yeast at a global scale, by reconstructing the genome scale metabolic model, is essential for manipulating its metabolic capabilities and for successful transfer of its capabilities to other industrial microbes. Results We present a genome-scale metabolic model for Scheffersomyces stipitis, a native xylose utilizing yeast. The model was reconstructed based on genome sequence annotation, detailed experimental investigation and known yeast physiology. Macromolecular composition of Scheffersomyces stipitis biomass was estimated experimentally and its ability to grow on different carbon, nitrogen, sulphur and phosphorus sources was determined by phenotype microarrays. The compartmentalized model, developed based on an iterative procedure, accounted for 814 genes, 1371 reactions, and 971 metabolites. In silico computed growth rates were compared with high-throughput phenotyping data and the model could predict the qualitative outcomes in 74% of substrates investigated. Model simulations were used to identify the biosynthetic requirements for anaerobic growth of Scheffersomyces stipitis on glucose and the results were validated with published literature. The bottlenecks in Scheffersomyces stipitis metabolic network for xylose uptake and nucleotide cofactor recycling were identified by in silico flux variability analysis. The scope of the model in enhancing the mechanistic understanding of microbial metabolism is demonstrated by identifying a mechanism for mitochondrial respiration and oxidative phosphorylation. Conclusion The genome

  2. Revealing the cerebral regions and networks mediating vulnerability to depression: oxidative metabolism mapping of rat brain.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Harro, Jaanus; Kanarik, Margus; Kaart, Tanel; Matrov, Denis; Kõiv, Kadri; Mällo, Tanel; Del Río, Joaquin; Tordera, Rosa M; Ramirez, Maria J

    2014-07-01

    The large variety of available animal models has revealed much on the neurobiology of depression, but each model appears as specific to a significant extent, and distinction between stress response, pathogenesis of depression and underlying vulnerability is difficult to make. Evidence from epidemiological studies suggests that depression occurs in biologically predisposed subjects under impact of adverse life events. We applied the diathesis-stress concept to reveal brain regions and functional networks that mediate vulnerability to depression and response to chronic stress by collapsing data on cerebral long term neuronal activity as measured by cytochrome c oxidase histochemistry in distinct animal models. Rats were rendered vulnerable to depression either by partial serotonergic lesion or by maternal deprivation, or selected for a vulnerable phenotype (low positive affect, low novelty-related activity or high hedonic response). Environmental adversity was brought about by applying chronic variable stress or chronic social defeat. Several brain regions, most significantly median raphe, habenula, retrosplenial cortex and reticular thalamus, were universally implicated in long-term metabolic stress response, vulnerability to depression, or both. Vulnerability was associated with higher oxidative metabolism levels as compared to resilience to chronic stress. Chronic stress, in contrast, had three distinct patterns of effect on oxidative metabolism in vulnerable vs. resilient animals. In general, associations between regional activities in several brain circuits were strongest in vulnerable animals, and chronic stress disrupted this interrelatedness. These findings highlight networks that underlie resilience to stress, and the distinct response to stress that occurs in vulnerable subjects. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  3. Report on the IAEA technical meeting on network of nuclear reaction data centres

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Pronyaev, V.G.; Schwerer, O.; Nichols, A.L.

    2002-08-01

    An IAEA Technical Meeting on the Network of Nuclear Reaction Data Centres (and the biennial Data Centre Heads' Meeting) was held at the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency, Issy-les-Moulineaux (near Paris), France, from 27 to 30 May 2002. The meeting was attended by 21 participants from 12 co-operating data centres of six Member States and two international organizations. This report contains the meeting summary, conclusions and actions, status reports of the participating data centres, and working papers considered. (author)

  4. A systems biology framework for modeling metabolic enzyme inhibition of Mycobacterium tuberculosis

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Reifman Jaques

    2009-09-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background Because metabolism is fundamental in sustaining microbial life, drugs that target pathogen-specific metabolic enzymes and pathways can be very effective. In particular, the metabolic challenges faced by intracellular pathogens, such as Mycobacterium tuberculosis, residing in the infected host provide novel opportunities for therapeutic intervention. Results We developed a mathematical framework to simulate the effects on the growth of a pathogen when enzymes in its metabolic pathways are inhibited. Combining detailed models of enzyme kinetics, a complete metabolic network description as modeled by flux balance analysis, and a dynamic cell population growth model, we quantitatively modeled and predicted the dose-response of the 3-nitropropionate inhibitor on the growth of M. tuberculosis in a medium whose carbon source was restricted to fatty acids, and that of the 5'-O-(N-salicylsulfamoyl adenosine inhibitor in a medium with low-iron concentration. Conclusion The predicted results quantitatively reproduced the experimentally measured dose-response curves, ranging over three orders of magnitude in inhibitor concentration. Thus, by allowing for detailed specifications of the underlying enzymatic kinetics, metabolic reactions/constraints, and growth media, our model captured the essential chemical and biological factors that determine the effects of drug inhibition on in vitro growth of M. tuberculosis cells.

  5. A Synthetic Alternative to Canonical One-Carbon Metabolism.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bouzon, Madeleine; Perret, Alain; Loreau, Olivier; Delmas, Valérie; Perchat, Nadia; Weissenbach, Jean; Taran, Frédéric; Marlière, Philippe

    2017-08-18

    One-carbon metabolism is an ubiquitous metabolic pathway that encompasses the reactions transferring formyl-, hydroxymethyl- and methyl-groups bound to tetrahydrofolate for the synthesis of purine nucleotides, thymidylate, methionine and dehydropantoate, the precursor of coenzyme A. An alternative cyclic pathway was designed that substitutes 4-hydroxy-2-oxobutanoic acid (HOB), a compound absent from known metabolism, for the amino acids serine and glycine as one-carbon donors. It involves two novel reactions, the transamination of l-homoserine and the transfer of a one-carbon unit from HOB to tetrahydrofolate releasing pyruvate as coproduct. Since canonical reactions regenerate l-homoserine from pyruvate by carboxylation and subsequent reduction, every one-carbon moiety made available for anabolic reactions originates from CO 2 . The HOB-dependent pathway was established in an Escherichia coli auxotroph selected for prototrophy using long-term cultivation protocols. Genetic, metabolic and biochemical evidence support the emergence of a functional HOB-dependent one-carbon pathway achieved with the recruitment of the two enzymes l-homoserine transaminase and HOB-hydroxymethyltransferase and of HOB as an essential metabolic intermediate. Escherichia coli biochemical reprogramming was achieved by minimally altering canonical metabolism and leveraging on natural selection mechanisms, thereby launching the resulting strain on an evolutionary trajectory diverging from all known extant species.

  6. Reaction-diffusion-like formalism for plastic neural networks reveals dissipative solitons at criticality

    Science.gov (United States)

    Grytskyy, Dmytro; Diesmann, Markus; Helias, Moritz

    2016-06-01

    Self-organized structures in networks with spike-timing dependent synaptic plasticity (STDP) are likely to play a central role for information processing in the brain. In the present study we derive a reaction-diffusion-like formalism for plastic feed-forward networks of nonlinear rate-based model neurons with a correlation sensitive learning rule inspired by and being qualitatively similar to STDP. After obtaining equations that describe the change of the spatial shape of the signal from layer to layer, we derive a criterion for the nonlinearity necessary to obtain stable dynamics for arbitrary input. We classify the possible scenarios of signal evolution and find that close to the transition to the unstable regime metastable solutions appear. The form of these dissipative solitons is determined analytically and the evolution and interaction of several such coexistent objects is investigated.

  7. Analysis of the enzyme network involved in cattle milk production using graph theory.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ghorbani, Sholeh; Tahmoorespur, Mojtaba; Masoudi Nejad, Ali; Nasiri, Mohammad; Asgari, Yazdan

    2015-06-01

    Understanding cattle metabolism and its relationship with milk products is important in bovine breeding. A systemic view could lead to consequences that will result in a better understanding of existing concepts. Topological indices and quantitative characterizations mostly result from the application of graph theory on biological data. In the present work, the enzyme network involved in cattle milk production was reconstructed and analyzed based on available bovine genome information using several public datasets (NCBI, Uniprot, KEGG, and Brenda). The reconstructed network consisted of 3605 reactions named by KEGG compound numbers and 646 enzymes that catalyzed the corresponding reactions. The characteristics of the directed and undirected network were analyzed using Graph Theory. The mean path length was calculated to be4.39 and 5.41 for directed and undirected networks, respectively. The top 11 hub enzymes whose abnormality could harm bovine health and reduce milk production were determined. Therefore, the aim of constructing the enzyme centric network was twofold; first to find out whether such network followed the same properties of other biological networks, and second, to find the key enzymes. The results of the present study can improve our understanding of milk production in cattle. Also, analysis of the enzyme network can help improve the modeling and simulation of biological systems and help design desired phenotypes to increase milk production quality or quantity.

  8. Summary report on [IAEA] technical meeting of the International Network of Nuclear Reaction Data Centres

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Dunaeva, S.; Otsuka, N.; Schwerer, O.

    2009-08-01

    An IAEA Technical Meeting of the International Network of Nuclear Reaction Data Centres was held at the IAEA Headquarters in Vienna from 25 to 26 May 2009. The meeting was attended by 23 participants from 13 cooperating data centres. A summary of the meeting is given in this report, along with the conclusions, actions, and status report of the participating data centres. (author)

  9. Gene regulatory networks elucidating huanglongbing disease mechanisms.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Federico Martinelli

    Full Text Available Next-generation sequencing was exploited to gain deeper insight into the response to infection by Candidatus liberibacter asiaticus (CaLas, especially the immune disregulation and metabolic dysfunction caused by source-sink disruption. Previous fruit transcriptome data were compared with additional RNA-Seq data in three tissues: immature fruit, and young and mature leaves. Four categories of orchard trees were studied: symptomatic, asymptomatic, apparently healthy, and healthy. Principal component analysis found distinct expression patterns between immature and mature fruits and leaf samples for all four categories of trees. A predicted protein - protein interaction network identified HLB-regulated genes for sugar transporters playing key roles in the overall plant responses. Gene set and pathway enrichment analyses highlight the role of sucrose and starch metabolism in disease symptom development in all tissues. HLB-regulated genes (glucose-phosphate-transporter, invertase, starch-related genes would likely determine the source-sink relationship disruption. In infected leaves, transcriptomic changes were observed for light reactions genes (downregulation, sucrose metabolism (upregulation, and starch biosynthesis (upregulation. In parallel, symptomatic fruits over-expressed genes involved in photosynthesis, sucrose and raffinose metabolism, and downregulated starch biosynthesis. We visualized gene networks between tissues inducing a source-sink shift. CaLas alters the hormone crosstalk, resulting in weak and ineffective tissue-specific plant immune responses necessary for bacterial clearance. Accordingly, expression of WRKYs (including WRKY70 was higher in fruits than in leaves. Systemic acquired responses were inadequately activated in young leaves, generally considered the sites where most new infections occur.

  10. Summary Report of the Technical Meeting on International Network of Nuclear Reaction Data Centres

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Otsuka, Naohiko

    2012-06-01

    This report summarizes the IAEA Technical Meeting on the International Network of Nuclear Reaction Data Centres, held at the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) in Issy-les-Moulineaux, France from 16 to 19 April 2012. The meeting was attended by twenty-three participants representing thirteen cooperative centres from eight Member States and two International Organisations. A summary of the meeting is given in this report along with the conclusions and actions. (author)

  11. Report on the IAEA technical meeting on the network of nuclear reaction data centres

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Schwerer, O [International Atomic Energy Agency, Nuclear Data Section, Vienna (Austria)

    2006-02-15

    Results of the IAEA Technical meeting on the Network of Nuclear Reaction Data Centres held at the IAEA Headquarters, Vienna, Austria, 12 to 14 October 2005, are summarized in this report. The meeting was attended by 16 participants from 11 co-operating data centres of six Member States and two International Organizations. The report contains a summary of the meeting, the conclusions and actions, and status reports of the participating data centres. (author)

  12. Report on the IAEA technical meeting on the network of nuclear reaction data centres

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Schwerer, O.

    2006-02-01

    Results of the IAEA Technical meeting on the Network of Nuclear Reaction Data Centres held at the IAEA Headquarters, Vienna, Austria, 12 to 14 October 2005, are summarized in this report. The meeting was attended by 16 participants from 11 co-operating data centres of six Member States and two International Organizations. The report contains a summary of the meeting, the conclusions and actions, and status reports of the participating data centres. (author)

  13. Expanding the informational chemistries of life: peptide/RNA networks

    Science.gov (United States)

    Taran, Olga; Chen, Chenrui; Omosun, Tolulope O.; Hsieh, Ming-Chien; Rha, Allisandra; Goodwin, Jay T.; Mehta, Anil K.; Grover, Martha A.; Lynn, David G.

    2017-11-01

    The RNA world hypothesis simplifies the complex biopolymer networks underlining the informational and metabolic needs of living systems to a single biopolymer scaffold. This simplification requires abiotic reaction cascades for the construction of RNA, and this chemistry remains the subject of active research. Here, we explore a complementary approach involving the design of dynamic peptide networks capable of amplifying encoded chemical information and setting the stage for mutualistic associations with RNA. Peptide conformational networks are known to be capable of evolution in disease states and of co-opting metal ions, aromatic heterocycles and lipids to extend their emergent behaviours. The coexistence and association of dynamic peptide and RNA networks appear to have driven the emergence of higher-order informational systems in biology that are not available to either scaffold independently, and such mutualistic interdependence poses critical questions regarding the search for life across our Solar System and beyond. This article is part of the themed issue 'Reconceptualizing the origins of life'.

  14. Spatial localization of the first and last enzymes effectively connects active metabolic pathways in bacteria.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Meyer, Pablo; Cecchi, Guillermo; Stolovitzky, Gustavo

    2014-12-14

    Although much is understood about the enzymatic cascades that underlie cellular biosynthesis, comparatively little is known about the rules that determine their cellular organization. We performed a detailed analysis of the localization of E.coli GFP-tagged enzymes for cells growing exponentially. We found that out of 857 globular enzymes, at least 219 have a discrete punctuate localization in the cytoplasm and catalyze the first or the last reaction in 60% of biosynthetic pathways. A graph-theoretic analysis of E.coli's metabolic network shows that localized enzymes, in contrast to non-localized ones, form a tree-like hierarchical structure, have a higher within-group connectivity, and are traversed by a higher number of feed-forward and feedback loops than their non-localized counterparts. A Gene Ontology analysis of these enzymes reveals an enrichment of terms related to essential metabolic functions in growing cells. Given that these findings suggest a distinct metabolic role for localization, we studied the dynamics of cellular localization of the cell wall synthesizing enzymes in B. subtilis and found that enzymes localize during exponential growth but not during stationary growth. We conclude that active biochemical pathways inside the cytoplasm are organized spatially following a rule where their first or their last enzymes localize to effectively connect the different active pathways and thus could reflect the activity state of the cell's metabolic network.

  15. Predicting CYP2C19 Catalytic Parameters for Enantioselective Oxidations Using Artificial Neural Networks and a Chirality Code

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hartman, Jessica H.; Cothren, Steven D.; Park, Sun-Ha; Yun, Chul-Ho; Darsey, Jerry A.; Miller, Grover P.

    2013-01-01

    Cytochromes P450 (CYP for isoforms) play a central role in biological processes especially metabolism of chiral molecules; thus, development of computational methods to predict parameters for chiral reactions is important for advancing this field. In this study, we identified the most optimal artificial neural networks using conformation-independent chirality codes to predict CYP2C19 catalytic parameters for enantioselective reactions. Optimization of the neural networks required identifying the most suitable representation of structure among a diverse array of training substrates, normalizing distribution of the corresponding catalytic parameters (kcat, Km, and kcat/Km), and determining the best topology for networks to make predictions. Among different structural descriptors, the use of partial atomic charges according to the CHelpG scheme and inclusion of hydrogens yielded the most optimal artificial neural networks. Their training also required resolution of poorly distributed output catalytic parameters using a Box-Cox transformation. End point leave-one-out cross correlations of the best neural networks revealed that predictions for individual catalytic parameters (kcat and Km) were more consistent with experimental values than those for catalytic efficiency (kcat/Km). Lastly, neural networks predicted correctly enantioselectivity and comparable catalytic parameters measured in this study for previously uncharacterized CYP2C19 substrates, R- and S-propranolol. Taken together, these seminal computational studies for CYP2C19 are the first to predict all catalytic parameters for enantioselective reactions using artificial neural networks and thus provide a foundation for expanding the prediction of cytochrome P450 reactions to chiral drugs, pollutants, and other biologically active compounds. PMID:23673224

  16. Drug Metabolism

    Indian Academy of Sciences (India)

    IAS Admin

    behind metabolic reactions, importance, and consequences with several ... required for drug action. ... lism, which is catalyzed by enzymes present in the above-men- ... catalyze the transfer of one atom of oxygen to a substrate produc-.

  17. Identification of cisplatin-regulated metabolic pathways in pluripotent stem cells.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Louise von Stechow

    Full Text Available The chemotherapeutic compound, cisplatin causes various kinds of DNA lesions but also triggers other pertubations, such as ER and oxidative stress. We and others have shown that treatment of pluripotent stem cells with cisplatin causes a plethora of transcriptional and post-translational alterations that, to a major extent, point to DNA damage response (DDR signaling. The orchestrated DDR signaling network is important to arrest the cell cycle and repair the lesions or, in case of damage beyond repair, eliminate affected cells. Failure to properly balance the various aspects of the DDR in stem cells contributes to ageing and cancer. Here, we performed metabolic profiling by mass spectrometry of embryonic stem (ES cells treated for different time periods with cisplatin. We then integrated metabolomics with transcriptomics analyses and connected cisplatin-regulated metabolites with regulated metabolic enzymes to identify enriched metabolic pathways. These included nucleotide metabolism, urea cycle and arginine and proline metabolism. Silencing of identified proline metabolic and catabolic enzymes indicated that altered proline metabolism serves as an adaptive, rather than a toxic response. A group of enriched metabolic pathways clustered around the metabolite S-adenosylmethionine, which is a hub for methylation and transsulfuration reactions and polyamine metabolism. Enzymes and metabolites with pro- or anti-oxidant functions were also enriched but enhanced levels of reactive oxygen species were not measured in cisplatin-treated ES cells. Lastly, a number of the differentially regulated metabolic enzymes were identified as target genes of the transcription factor p53, pointing to p53-mediated alterations in metabolism in response to genotoxic stress. Altogether, our findings reveal interconnecting metabolic pathways that are responsive to cisplatin and may serve as signaling modules in the DDR in pluripotent stem cells.

  18. Delay-induced Turing-like waves for one-species reaction-diffusion model on a network

    Science.gov (United States)

    Petit, Julien; Carletti, Timoteo; Asllani, Malbor; Fanelli, Duccio

    2015-09-01

    A one-species time-delay reaction-diffusion system defined on a complex network is studied. Traveling waves are predicted to occur following a symmetry-breaking instability of a homogeneous stationary stable solution, subject to an external nonhomogeneous perturbation. These are generalized Turing-like waves that materialize in a single-species populations dynamics model, as the unexpected byproduct of the imposed delay in the diffusion part. Sufficient conditions for the onset of the instability are mathematically provided by performing a linear stability analysis adapted to time-delayed differential equations. The method here developed exploits the properties of the Lambert W-function. The prediction of the theory are confirmed by direct numerical simulation carried out for a modified version of the classical Fisher model, defined on a Watts-Strogatz network and with the inclusion of the delay.

  19. Observability of plant metabolic networks is reflected in the correlation of metabolic profiles

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Schwahn, Kevin; Küken, Anika; Kliebenstein, Daniel James

    2016-01-01

    to obtain information about the entire system. Yet, the extent to which the data profiles reflect the role of components in the observability of the system remains unexplored. Here we first identify the sensor metabolites in the model plant Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) by employing state...... with in silico generated metabolic profiles from a medium-size kinetic model of plant central carbon metabolism. Altogether, due to the small number of identified sensors, our study implies that targeted metabolite analyses may provide the vast majority of relevant information about plant metabolic systems....

  20. Pancreatic stellate cells support tumour metabolism through autophagic alanine secretion.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sousa, Cristovão M; Biancur, Douglas E; Wang, Xiaoxu; Halbrook, Christopher J; Sherman, Mara H; Zhang, Li; Kremer, Daniel; Hwang, Rosa F; Witkiewicz, Agnes K; Ying, Haoqiang; Asara, John M; Evans, Ronald M; Cantley, Lewis C; Lyssiotis, Costas A; Kimmelman, Alec C

    2016-08-25

    Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is an aggressive disease characterized by an intense fibrotic stromal response and deregulated metabolism. The role of the stroma in PDAC biology is complex and it has been shown to play critical roles that differ depending on the biological context. The stromal reaction also impairs the vasculature, leading to a highly hypoxic, nutrient-poor environment. As such, these tumours must alter how they capture and use nutrients to support their metabolic needs. Here we show that stroma-associated pancreatic stellate cells (PSCs) are critical for PDAC metabolism through the secretion of non-essential amino acids (NEAA). Specifically, we uncover a previously undescribed role for alanine, which outcompetes glucose and glutamine-derived carbon in PDAC to fuel the tricarboxylic acid (TCA) cycle, and thus NEAA and lipid biosynthesis. This shift in fuel source decreases the tumour’s dependence on glucose and serum-derived nutrients, which are limited in the pancreatic tumour microenvironment. Moreover, we demonstrate that alanine secretion by PSCs is dependent on PSC autophagy, a process that is stimulated by cancer cells. Thus, our results demonstrate a novel metabolic interaction between PSCs and cancer cells, in which PSC-derived alanine acts as an alternative carbon source. This finding highlights a previously unappreciated metabolic network within pancreatic tumours in which diverse fuel sources are used to promote growth in an austere tumour microenvironment.