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Title: Development of Computational Tools for Metabolic Model Curation, Flux Elucidation and Strain Design

Technical Report ·
DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/1070068· OSTI ID:1070068

An overarching goal of the Department of Energy mission is the efficient deployment and engineering of microbial and plant systems to enable biomass conversion in pursuit of high energy density liquid biofuels. This has spurred the pace at which new organisms are sequenced and annotated. This torrent of genomic information has opened the door to understanding metabolism in not just skeletal pathways and a handful of microorganisms but for truly genome-scale reconstructions derived for hundreds of microbes and plants. Understanding and redirecting metabolism is crucial because metabolic fluxes are unique descriptors of cellular physiology that directly assess the current cellular state and quantify the effect of genetic engineering interventions. At the same time, however, trying to keep pace with the rate of genomic data generation has ushered in a number of modeling and computational challenges related to (i) the automated assembly, testing and correction of genome-scale metabolic models, (ii) metabolic flux elucidation using labeled isotopes, and (iii) comprehensive identification of engineering interventions leading to the desired metabolism redirection.

Research Organization:
Pennsylvania State Univ., University Park, PA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), Biological and Environmental Research (BER)
DOE Contract Number:
FG02-05ER25684
OSTI ID:
1070068
Report Number(s):
DOE/FG/25684-1
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English