Simulating single-cell metabolism using a stochastic flux-balance analysis algorithm

Stochasticity from gene expression in single cells is known to drive metabolic heterogeneity at the level of cellular populations, which is understood to have important consequences for issues such as microbial drug tolerance and treatment of human diseases like cancer. Despite considerable advancements in profiling the genomes, transcriptomes, and proteomes of single cells, it remains difficult to experimentally characterize their metabolism at the genome scale. Computational methods could bridge this gap toward a systems understanding of single-cell biology. To address this challenge, we developed stochastic simulation algorithm with flux-balance analysis embedded (SSA-FBA), a computational framework for simulating the stochastic dynamics of the metabolism of individual cells using genome-scale metabolic models with experimental estimates of gene expression and enzymatic reaction rate parameters. SSA-FBA extends the constraint-based modeling formalism of metabolic network modeling to the single-cell regime, enabling simulation when experimentation is intractable. We also developed an efficient implementation of SSA-FBA that leverages the topology of embedded flux-balance analysis models to significantly reduce the computational cost of simulation. As a preliminary case study, we built a reduced single-cell model of Mycoplasma pneumoniae and used SSA-FBA to illustrate the role of stochasticity on the dynamics of metabolism at the single-cell level.