Human Metabolic Network: Reconstruction, Simulation, and Applications in Systems Biology

Metabolites

Ming Wu¹ 

[1] Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824, USA

关键词: human metabolic network;    reconstructing context-dependent metabolic network;    Constraint Based Modeling;    simulation;    systems biology;   

DOI  :  10.3390/metabo2010242

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

Metabolism is crucial to cell growth and proliferation. Deficiency or alterations in metabolic functions are known to be involved in many human diseases. Therefore, understanding the human metabolic system is important for the study and treatment of complex diseases. Current reconstructions of the global human metabolic network provide a computational platform to integrate genome-scale information on metabolism. The platform enables a systematic study of the regulation and is applicable to a wide variety of cases, wherein one could rely on in silico perturbations to predict novel targets, interpret systemic effects, and identify alterations in the metabolic states to better understand the genotype-phenotype relationships. In this review, we describe the reconstruction of the human metabolic network, introduce the constraint based modeling approach to analyze metabolic networks, and discuss systems biology applications to study human physiology and pathology. We highlight the challenges and opportunities in network reconstruction and systems modeling of the human metabolic system.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2012 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.