Structural and functional analyses of microbial metabolic networks reveal novel insights into genome-scale metabolic fluxes

2018 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 1590-1603 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gaoyang Li ◽  
Huansheng Cao ◽  
Ying Xu

Abstract We present here an integrated analysis of structures and functions of genome-scale metabolic networks of 17 microorganisms. Our structural analyses of these networks revealed that the node degree of each network, represented as a (simplified) reaction network, follows a power-law distribution, and the clustering coefficient of each network has a positive correlation with the corresponding node degree. Together, these properties imply that each network has exactly one large and densely connected subnetwork or core. Further analyses revealed that each network consists of three functionally distinct subnetworks: (i) a core, consisting of a large number of directed reaction cycles of enzymes for interconversions among intermediate metabolites; (ii) a catabolic module, with a largely layered structure consisting of mostly catabolic enzymes; (iii) an anabolic module with a similar structure consisting of virtually all anabolic genes; and (iv) the three subnetworks cover on average ∼56, ∼31 and ∼13% of a network’s nodes across the 17 networks, respectively. Functional analyses suggest: (1) cellular metabolic fluxes generally go from the catabolic module to the core for substantial interconversions, then the flux directions to anabolic module appear to be determined by input nutrient levels as well as a set of precursors needed for macromolecule syntheses; and (2) enzymes in each subnetwork have characteristic ranges of kinetic parameters, suggesting optimized metabolic and regulatory relationships among the three subnetworks.

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
F. Gatto ◽  
J. Nielsen

ABSTRACTMetabolic reprogramming is considered a hallmark of malignant transformation. However, it is not clear whether the network of metabolic reactions expressed by cancers of different origin differ from each other nor from normal human tissues. In this study, we reconstructed functional and connected genome-scale metabolic models for 917 primary tumors based on the probability of expression for 3,765 reference metabolic genes in the sample. This network-centric approach revealed that tumor metabolic networks are largely similar in terms of accounted reactions, despite diversity in the expression of the associated genes. On average, each network contained 4,721 reactions, of which 74% were core reactions (present in >95% of all models). Whilst 99.3% of the core reactions were classified as housekeeping also in normal tissues, we identified reactions catalyzed by ARG2, RHAG, SLC6 and SLC16 family gene members, and PTGS1 and PTGS2 as core exclusively in cancer. The remaining 26% of the reactions were contextual reactions. Their inclusion was dependent in one case (GLS2) on the absence of TP53 mutations and in 94.6% of cases on differences in cancer types. This dependency largely resembled differences in expression patterns in the corresponding normal tissues, with some exceptions like the presence of the NANP-encoded reaction in tumors not from the female reproductive system or of the SLC5A9-encoded reaction in kidney-pancreatic-colorectal tumors. In conclusion, tumors expressed a metabolic network virtually overlapping the matched normal tissues, raising the possibility that metabolic reprogramming simply reflects cancer cell plasticity to adapt to varying conditions thanks to redundancy and complexity of the underlying metabolic networks. At the same time, the here uncovered exceptions represent a resource to identify selective liabilities of tumor metabolism.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gaoyang Li ◽  
Wei Du ◽  
Huansheng Cao

AbstractGenome-scale metabolic networks (GSMs) are mathematic representation of a set of stoichiometrically balanced reactions. However, such static GSMs do not reflect or incorporate functional organization of genes and their dynamic regulation (e.g., operons and regulons). Specifically, there are numerous topologically coupled local reactions through which fluxes are coordinated; and downstream metabolites often dynamically regulate the gene expression of their reactions via feedback. Here, we present a method which reconstructs GSMs with locally coupled reactions and transcriptional regulation of metabolism by key metabolites. The proposed method has outstanding performance in phenotype prediction of wild-type and mutants in Escherichia coli (E. coli), Saccharomyces cerevisiae (S. cerevisiae) and Bacillus subtilis (B. subtilis) growing in various conditions, outperforming existing methods. The predicted growth rate and metabolic fluxes are highly correlated with those experimentally measured. More importantly, our method can also explain the observed growth rates by capturing the ‘real’ (experimentally measured) changes in flux between the wild-types and mutants. Overall, by identifying and incorporating locally organized and regulated functional modules into GSMs, Decrem achieves accurate predictions of phenotypes and has broad applications in bioengineering, synthetic biology and microbial pathology.


FEBS Open Bio ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
You‐Tyun Wang ◽  
Min‐Ru Lin ◽  
Wei‐Chen Chen ◽  
Wu‐Hsiung Wu ◽  
Feng‐Sheng Wang

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ecehan Abdik ◽  
Tunahan Cakir

Genome-scale metabolic networks enable systemic investigation of metabolic alterations caused by diseases by providing interpretation of omics data. Although Mus musculus (mouse) is one of the most commonly used model...


2012 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Abdelhalim Larhlimi ◽  
Laszlo David ◽  
Joachim Selbig ◽  
Alexander Bockmayr

2010 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 114 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karin Radrich ◽  
Yoshimasa Tsuruoka ◽  
Paul Dobson ◽  
Albert Gevorgyan ◽  
Neil Swainston ◽  
...  

2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (10) ◽  
pp. 830-835 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xingxing Jian ◽  
Ningchuan Li ◽  
Qian Chen ◽  
Qiang Hua

Reconstruction and application of genome-scale metabolic models (GEMs) have facilitated metabolic engineering by providing a platform on which systematic computational analysis of metabolic networks can be performed.


PLoS ONE ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (12) ◽  
pp. e0240953
Author(s):  
Christian Schulz ◽  
Eivind Almaas

Approaches for systematizing information of relatedness between organisms is important in biology. Phylogenetic analyses based on sets of highly conserved genes are currently the basis for the Tree of Life. Genome-scale metabolic reconstructions contain high-quality information regarding the metabolic capability of an organism and are typically restricted to metabolically active enzyme-encoding genes. While there are many tools available to generate draft reconstructions, expert-level knowledge is still required to generate and manually curate high-quality genome-scale metabolic models and to fill gaps in their reaction networks. Here, we use the tool AutoKEGGRec to construct 975 genome-scale metabolic draft reconstructions encoded in the KEGG database without further curation. The organisms are selected across all three domains, and their metabolic networks serve as basis for generating phylogenetic trees. We find that using all reactions encoded, these metabolism-based comparisons give rise to a phylogenetic tree with close similarity to the Tree of Life. While this tree is quite robust to reasonable levels of noise in the metabolic reaction content of an organism, we find a significant heterogeneity in how much noise an organism may tolerate before it is incorrectly placed in the tree. Furthermore, by using the protein sequences for particular metabolic functions and pathway sets, such as central carbon-, nitrogen-, and sulfur-metabolism, as basis for the organism comparisons, we generate highly specific phylogenetic trees. We believe the generation of phylogenetic trees based on metabolic reaction content, in particular when focused on specific functions and pathways, could aid the identification of functionally important metabolic enzymes and be of value for genome-scale metabolic modellers and enzyme-engineers.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document