scholarly journals Cellular determinants of metabolite concentration ranges

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeanne M. O. Eloundou-Mbebi ◽  
Anika Küken ◽  
Georg Basler ◽  
Zoran Nikoloski

AbstractCellular functions are shaped by reaction networks whose dynamics are determined by the concentrations of underlying components. However, cellular mechanisms ensuring that a component’s concentration resides in a given range remain elusive. We present network properties which suffice to identify components whose concentration ranges can be efficiently computed in mass-action metabolic networks. We show that the derived ranges are in excellent agreement with simulations from a detailed kinetic metabolic model of Escherichia coli. We demonstrate that the approach can be used with genome-scale metabolic models to arrive at predictions concordant with measurements from Escherichia coli under different growth scenarios. By application to 14 genome-scale metabolic models from diverse species, our approach specifies the cellular determinants of concentration ranges that can be effectively employed to make predictions for a variety of biotechnological and medical applications.Author SummaryWe present a computational approach for inferring concentration ranges from genome-scale metabolic models. The approach specifies a determinant and molecular mechanism underling facile control of concentration ranges for components in large-scale cellular networks. Most importantly, the predictions about concentration ranges do not require knowledge of kinetic parameters (which are difficult to specify at a genome scale), provided measurements of concentrations in a reference state. The approach assumes that reaction rates follow the mass action law used in the derivations of other types of kinetics. We apply the approach with large-scale kinetic and stoichiometric metabolic models of organisms from different kingdoms of life to show that we can identify a proportion of metabolites to which our approach is applicable. By challenging the predictions of concentration ranges in the genome-scale metabolic network of E. coli with real-world data sets, we further demonstrate the prediction power and limitations of the approach.

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.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ove Øyås ◽  
Jörg Stelling

The scope of application of genome-scale constraint-based models (CBMs) of metabolic networks rapidly expands toward multicellular systems. However, comprehensive analysis of CBMs through metabolic pathway analysis remains a major computational challenge because pathway numbers grow combinatorially with model sizes. Here, we define the minimal pathways (MPs) of a metabolic (sub)network as a subset of its elementary flux vectors. We enumerate or sample them efficiently using iterative minimization and a simple graph representation of MPs. These methods outperform the state of the art and they allow scalable pathway analysis for microbial and mammalian CBMs. Sampling random MPs from Escherichia coli’s central carbon metabolism in the context of a genome-scale CBM improves predictions of gene importance, and enumerating all minimal exchanges in a host-microbe model of the human gut predicts exchanges of metabolites associated with host-microbiota homeostasis and human health. MPs thereby open up new possibilities for the detailed analysis of large-scale metabolic networks.


2021 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yier Ma ◽  
Takeyuki Tamura

Flux balance analysis (FBA) is a crucial method to analyze large-scale constraint-based metabolic networks and computing design strategies for strain production in metabolic engineering. However, as it is often non-straightforward to obtain such design strategies to produce valuable metabolites, many tools have been proposed based on FBA. Among them, GridProd, which divides the solution space into small squares by focusing on the cell growth rate and the target metabolite production rate to efficiently find the reaction deletion strategies, was extended to CubeProd, which divides the solution space into small cubes. However, as GridProd and CubeProd naively divide the solution space into equal sizes, even places where solutions are unlikely to exist are examined. To address this issue, we introduce dynamic solution space division methods based on CubeProd for faster computing by avoiding searching in places where the solutions do not exist. We applied the proposed method DynCubeProd to iJO1366, which is a genome-scale constraint-based model of Escherichia coli. Compared with CubeProd, DynCubeProd significantly accelerated the calculation of the reaction deletion strategy for each target metabolite production. In addition, under the anaerobic condition of iJO1366, DynCubeProd could obtain the reaction deletion strategies for almost 40% of the target metabolites that the elementary flux vector-based method, which is one of the most effective methods in existence, could not. The developed software is available on https://github.com/Ma-Yier/DynCubeProd.


Author(s):  
Song-Min Schinn ◽  
Carly Morrison ◽  
Wei Wei ◽  
Lin Zhang ◽  
Nathan E. Lewis

AbstractThe control of nutrient availability is critical to large-scale manufacturing of biotherapeutics. However, the quantification of proteinogenic amino acids is time-consuming and thus is difficult to implement for real-time in situ bioprocess control. Genome-scale metabolic models describe the metabolic conversion from media nutrients to proliferation and recombinant protein production, and therefore are a promising platform for in silico monitoring and prediction of amino acid concentrations. This potential has not been realized due to unresolved challenges: (1) the models assume an optimal and highly efficient metabolism, and therefore tend to underestimate amino acid consumption, and (2) the models assume a steady state, and therefore have a short forecast range. We address these challenges by integrating machine learning with the metabolic models. Through this we demonstrate accurate and time-course dependent prediction of individual amino acid concentration in culture medium throughout the production process. Thus, these models can be deployed to control nutrient feeding to avoid premature nutrient depletion or provide early predictions of failed bioreactor runs.


Genetics ◽  
2001 ◽  
Vol 159 (4) ◽  
pp. 1765-1778
Author(s):  
Gregory J Budziszewski ◽  
Sharon Potter Lewis ◽  
Lyn Wegrich Glover ◽  
Jennifer Reineke ◽  
Gary Jones ◽  
...  

Abstract We have undertaken a large-scale genetic screen to identify genes with a seedling-lethal mutant phenotype. From screening ~38,000 insertional mutant lines, we identified >500 seedling-lethal mutants, completed cosegregation analysis of the insertion and the lethal phenotype for >200 mutants, molecularly characterized 54 mutants, and provided a detailed description for 22 of them. Most of the seedling-lethal mutants seem to affect chloroplast function because they display altered pigmentation and affect genes encoding proteins predicted to have chloroplast localization. Although a high level of functional redundancy in Arabidopsis might be expected because 65% of genes are members of gene families, we found that 41% of the essential genes found in this study are members of Arabidopsis gene families. In addition, we isolated several interesting classes of mutants and genes. We found three mutants in the recently discovered nonmevalonate isoprenoid biosynthetic pathway and mutants disrupting genes similar to Tic40 and tatC, which are likely to be involved in chloroplast protein translocation. Finally, we directly compared T-DNA and Ac/Ds transposon mutagenesis methods in Arabidopsis on a genome scale. In each population, we found only about one-third of the insertion mutations cosegregated with a mutant phenotype.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher E. Lawson ◽  
Aniela B. Mundinger ◽  
Hanna Koch ◽  
Tyler B. Jacobson ◽  
Coty A. Weathersby ◽  
...  

AbstractNitrite-oxidizing bacteria belonging to the genus Nitrospira mediate a key step in nitrification and play important roles in the biogeochemical nitrogen cycle and wastewater treatment. While these organisms have recently been shown to exhibit metabolic flexibility beyond their chemolithoautotrophic lifestyle, including the use of simple organic compounds to fuel their energy metabolism, the metabolic networks controlling their autotrophic and mixotrophic growth remain poorly understood. Here, we reconstructed a genome-scale metabolic model for Nitrospira moscoviensis (iNmo686) and used constraint-based analysis to evaluate the metabolic networks controlling autotrophic and formatotrophic growth on nitrite and formate, respectively. Subsequently, proteomic analysis and 13C-tracer experiments with bicarbonate and formate coupled to metabolomic analysis were performed to experimentally validate model predictions. Our findings support that N. moscoviensis uses the reductive tricarboxylic acid cycle for CO2 fixation. We also show that N. moscoviensis can indirectly use formate as a carbon source by oxidizing it first to CO2 followed by reassimilation, rather than direct incorporation via the reductive glycine pathway. Our study offers the first measurements of Nitrospira’s in vivo central carbon metabolism and provides a quantitative tool that can be used for understanding and predicting their metabolic processes.ImportanceNitrospira are globally abundant nitrifying bacteria in soil and aquatic ecosystems and wastewater treatment plants, where they control the oxidation of nitrite to nitrate. Despite their critical contribution to nitrogen cycling across diverse environments, detailed understanding of their metabolic network and prediction of their function under different environmental conditions remains a major challenge. Here, we provide the first constraint-based metabolic model of N. moscoviensis representing the ubiquitous Nitrospira lineage II and subsequently validate this model using proteomics and 13C-tracers combined with intracellular metabolomic analysis. The resulting genome-scale model will serve as a knowledge base of Nitrospira metabolism and lays the foundation for quantitative systems biology studies of these globally important nitrite- oxidizing bacteria.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Damoun Langary ◽  
Anika Kueken ◽  
Zoran Nikoloski

Balanced complexes in biochemical networks are at core of several theoretical and computational approaches that make statements about the properties of the steady states supported by the network. Recent computational approaches have employed balanced complexes to reduce metabolic networks, while ensuring preservation of particular steady-state properties; however, the underlying factors leading to the formation of balanced complexes have not been studied, yet. Here, we present a number of factorizations providing insights in mechanisms that lead to the origins of the corresponding balanced complexes. The proposed factorizations enable us to categorize balanced complexes into four distinct classes, each with specific origins and characteristics. They also provide the means to efficiently determine if a balanced complex in large-scale networks belongs to a particular class from the categorization. The results are obtained under very general conditions and irrespective of the network kinetics, rendering them broadly applicable across variety of network models. Application of the categorization shows that all classes of balanced complexes are present in large-scale metabolic models across all kingdoms of life, therefore paving the way to study their relevance with respect to different properties of steady states supported by these networks.


2018 ◽  
Vol 38 (6) ◽  
Author(s):  
Georg Basler ◽  
Alisdair R. Fernie ◽  
Zoran Nikoloski

Methodological and technological advances have recently paved the way for metabolic flux profiling in higher organisms, like plants. However, in comparison with omics technologies, flux profiling has yet to provide comprehensive differential flux maps at a genome-scale and in different cell types, tissues, and organs. Here we highlight the recent advances in technologies to gather metabolic labeling patterns and flux profiling approaches. We provide an opinion of how recent local flux profiling approaches can be used in conjunction with the constraint-based modeling framework to arrive at genome-scale flux maps. In addition, we point at approaches which use metabolomics data without introduction of label to predict either non-steady state fluxes in a time-series experiment or flux changes in different experimental scenarios. The combination of these developments allows an experimentally feasible approach for flux-based large-scale systems biology studies.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anika Küken ◽  
Philipp Wendering ◽  
Damoun Langary ◽  
Zoran Nikoloski

AbstractLarge-scale biochemical models are of increasing sizes due to the consideration of interacting organisms and tissues. Model reduction approaches that preserve the flux phenotypes can simplify the analysis and predictions of steady-state metabolic phenotypes. However, existing approaches either restrict functionality of reduced models or do not lead to significant decreases in the number of modelled metabolites. Here, we introduce an approach for model reduction based on the structural property of balancing of complexes that preserves the steady-state fluxes supported by the network and can be efficiently determined at genome scale. Using two large-scale mass-action kinetic models of Escherichia coli, we show that our approach results in a substantial reduction of 99% of metabolites. Applications to genome-scale metabolic models across kingdoms of life result in up to 55% and 85% reduction in the number of metabolites when arbitrary and mass-action kinetics is assumed, respectively. We also show that predictions of the specific growth rate from the reduced models match those based on the original models. Since steady-state flux phenotypes from the original model are preserved in the reduced, the approach paves the way for analysing other metabolic phenotypes in large-scale biochemical networks.


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