Genome-scale models allow interrogation of microbialreaction networks for a variety of purposes such as guiding metabolicengineering strategies and facilitating hypothesis-driven discovery. Thesuccess of in silico models dependson their ability to capture the underlying characteristics of the microbe ofinterest. To facilitate model testing and validation, we have developed aforced coupling algorithm (FOCAL) that can design experiments to test for theexistence of reactions or gene to reaction associations. FOCAL proposes mutantstrains and media conditions under which a particular network element isconditionally essential for cell growth or coupled to another measurablereaction (e.g. chemical production). By testing such conditions experimentally,hypothesized network elements can be confirmed or refuted and models can be subsequentlyrefined. We will present FOCAL results for three different genome scale modelsand illustrate how it can be used for a variety of applications (model testing,experimental design, and metabolic engineering).

Evaluating metabolic network elements via a forced coupling algorithm

243rd National Meeting (2012)

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