Matching metabolites and reactions in different metabolic networks

Comparing and identifying matching metabolites, reactions, and compartments in genome-scale reconstructed metabolic networks can be difficult due to inconsistent naming in different networks. In this paper, we propose metabolite and reaction matching techniques for matching metabolites and reactions in a given metabolic network to metabolites and reactions in another metabolic network. We employ a variety of techniques that include approximate string matching, similarity score functions and multi-step filtering techniques, all enhanced by a set of rules based on the underlying metabolic biochemistry. The proposed techniques are evaluated by an empirical study on four pairs of metabolic networks, and significant accuracy gains are achieved using the proposed metabolite and reaction identification techniques.