Metabolic Network Modelling - Genome-Scale Metabolic Reconstruction

Genome-Scale Metabolic Reconstruction

A metabolic reconstruction provides a highly mathematical, structured platform on which to understand the systems biology of metabolic pathways within an organism. The integration of biochemical metabolic pathways with rapidly available, unannotated genome sequences has developed what are called genome-scale metabolic models. Simply put, these models correspond metabolic genes with metabolic pathways. In general, the more information about physiology, biochemistry and genetics is available for the target organism, the better the predictive capacity of the reconstructed models. Mechanically speaking, the process of reconstructing prokaryotic and eukaryotic metabolic networks is essentially the same. Having said this, eukaryote reconstructions are typically more challenging because of the size of genomes, coverage of knowledge, and the multitude of cellular compartments. The first genome-scale metabolic model was generated in 1995 for Haemophilus influenzae. The first multicellular organism, C. elegans, was reconstructed in 1998. Since then, many reconstructions have been formed. For a list of reconstructions that have been converted into a model and experimentally validated, see http://gcrg.ucsd.edu/InSilicoOrganisms/OtherOrganisms.