Reconciliation of Genome-Scale Metabolic Reconstructions for Comparative Systems Analysis
Figure 8
Metabolic flexibility of pathway pairs in PAO and PPU.
In panel (a) Each pixel represents a pair of pathways in the reconciled models of P. aeruginosa (PAO) and P. putida (PPU). For each pathway pair, boundary curves for feasible flux tradeoffs were plotted for 20 random pairs of reactions belonging to the two pathways (or 10 pairs for pathways paired with themselves). The area within these feasible flux bounds was calculated in both models for each reaction pair. Then, a statistical test was used to determine whether PAO or PPU had a significantly larger area in the set of reaction pairs representing the given pathway pair. The degree to which PAO or PPU showed a larger area for a given pathway pair is marked by pixel color, as shown in the legend. Blue pixels denote pathway pairs that do not meet the significance cutoff, i.e., for which different reaction pairs behaved inconsistently within the pathway pair. A larger area in a given organism can be interpreted as a higher metabolic flexibility with regards to tradeoffs between the reaction/pathway pairs. Panel (b) lists features of the pathways with the most flexibility in PAO and PPU, as derived from the plot in panel (a). (*) The number of reactions in each pathway is listed after the name of the pathway in (a), and in the ‘# rxns in pathway’ column of (b). Only reactions that are both (1) in both models and (2) that can carry flux in at least 1 model are included in this figure.