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Updated: May 28, 2025

Workflow Based on the Combination of Isotopic Tracer Experiments to Investigate Microbial Metabolism of Multiple Nutrient Sources
Published on: January 22, 2018
A genome-scale metabolic reconstruction resource of 247,092 diverse human microbes spanning multiple continents, age
Almut Heinken1, Timothy Otto Hulshof2, Bram Nap2
1School of Medicine, University of Galway, Galway, Ireland; Ryan Institute, University of Galway, Galway, Ireland; Inserm UMRS 1256 NGERE, University of Lorraine, Nancy, France.
Abstract:
Genome-scale modeling of microbiome metabolism enables the simulation of diet-host-microbiome-disease interactions. However, current genome-scale reconstruction resources are limited in scope by computational challenges. We developed an optimized and highly parallelized reconstruction and analysis pipeline to build a resource of 247,092 microbial genome-scale metabolic reconstructions, deemed APOLLO. APOLLO spans 19 phyla, contains >60% of uncharacterized strains, and accounts for strains from 34 countries, all age groups, and multiple body sites. Using machine learning, we predicted with high accuracy the taxonomic assignment of strains based on the computed metabolic features. We then built 14,451 metagenomic sample-specific microbiome community models to systematically interrogate their community-level metabolic capabilities. We show that sample-specific metabolic pathways accurately stratify microbiomes by body site, age, and disease state. APOLLO is freely available, enables the systematic interrogation of the metabolic capabilities of largely still uncultured and unclassified species, and provides unprecedented opportunities for systems-level modeling of personalized host-microbiome co-metabolism.

