MicrobesFlux: a Web Based Platform for Reconstruction and Analysis of Genome-Scale Metabolic Models

Arising interests have focused on metabolic flux analysis of genome-scale networks in microorganisms. Fluxomics approach empowers systems analysis of cell-wide functions and regulations. Although such in silico analysis of metabolic networks has been applied in diverse microorganisms, the model development still lags behind the pace of high throughput genome sequencing. To bridge the gap between the genome annotation and the functional characterization, it is necessary for biologists to have convenient fluxomics tools for reconstruction of genome-scale models. Here, we present MicrobesFlux, a web-based platform which performs constraint-based flux balance analysis under both steady and dynamic metabolic statuses. MicrobesFlux contains five features as follows. First, it has a user-friendly interface to import annotated metabolic network from KEGG database. Second, it allows genome reconstructions (e.g. gene knock-out or introducing heterologous pathways). Third, it automatically creates a constraint-based flux balance model to quantify the intracellular flux distributions. Fourth, it can perform dynamic flux analysis via static optimization approach. Fifth, it facilitates the optimization of large-scale metabolic models via cloud computation methods.