Studying the relationship between robustness against mutations in metabolic networks and lifestyle of organisms

Robustness is the key feature of biological networks that enables living organisms to keep their homeostatic state and to survive against external and internal perturbations. Variations in environmental conditions or nutrients and intracellular changes such as genetic mutations have the potential to change stability and efficiency of an organism. Structural robustness helps biological systems to choose alternative routes of adaptation to varying conditions. In this study, in order to estimate the structural robustness in metabolic networks we presented a novel flux balance-based approach inspired by bond percolation theory. Fourteen in silico metabolic models were studied in this work in order to examine the possible relationship between the lifestyle of organisms and their metabolic robustness. The results of this study confirm that in organisms which are highly adapted to their environment robustness to mutations may decrease compared to other organisms.