MetaNET--a web-accessible interactive platform for biological metabolic network analysis.

Area of Science:

• Systems Biology
• Metabolic Engineering
• Computational Biology

Background:

• Metabolic reactions have been studied for over a century, forming the basis for computational models.
• Existing tools for metabolic network perturbation are often limited by dependencies and commercial restrictions.
• MetaNET is introduced as an open-source, platform-independent, and web-accessible resource for metabolic network analysis.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a user-friendly, accessible platform for comprehensive metabolic network analysis.
• To provide tools for identifying drug targets and optimizing metabolic throughput.
• To overcome limitations of existing metabolic modeling software.

Main Methods:

• Development of MetaNET, a web-accessible platform using custom scripts and open-source components (Galaxy, Systems Biology Research Tool).
• Integration of pre-defined workflows for common metabolic analysis tasks.
• Inclusion of over 50 functions for user-defined custom workflows.

Main Results:

• MetaNET enables various simulations including flux balance analysis for optimization and knock-out/knock-down studies.
• The platform facilitates flux variability analysis, chemical species participation, and identification of cycles and extreme paths.
• Choke point reaction analysis is incorporated to aid in potential drug target identification.

Conclusions:

• MetaNET offers a user-friendly interface for analyzing genome-scale metabolic networks under diverse conditions.
• The framework supports result storage, analysis repetition, and result sharing.
• Users can run simultaneous analyses using pre-defined and custom workflows.