Stoichiometric model and metabolic flux analysis for Leptospirillum ferrooxidans

A metabolic model for Leptospirillum ferrooxidans was developed based on the genomic information of an analogous iron oxidizing bacteria and on the pathways of ferrous iron oxidation, nitrogen and CO(2) assimilation based on experimental evidence for L. ferrooxidans found in the literature. From this metabolic reconstruction, a stoichiometric model was built, which includes 86 reactions describing the main catabolic and anabolic aspects of its metabolism. The model obtained has 2 degrees of freedom, so two external fluxes were estimated to achieve a determined and observable system. By using the external oxygen consumption rate and the generation flux biomass as input data, a metabolic flux map with a distribution of internal fluxes was obtained. The results obtained were verified with experimental data from the literature, achieving a very good prediction of the metabolic behavior of this bacterium at steady state.