NetMet

NetMet predicts the metabolic capabilities of microbial species and their potential metabolic exchanges within specified environments by integrating species-specific enzymatic reactions (EC numbers) with environmental metabolites identified by KEGG accessions.

Key Features:

• Species-specific enzymatic reactions: Accepts lists of enzymatic reactions associated with microbial species formatted using EC (Enzyme Commission) numbers.
• Metabolic environment specifications: Accepts lists of metabolites present in the environment identified by KEGG accessions.
• Individual metabolite production: Predicts which compounds individual microbial species can produce within each specified environment.
• Complementary interactions: Identifies metabolites that can be produced only through synergistic or complementary interactions between microbial species.
• Genomic-based simulations: Performs genomic-based simulations to explore metabolic capacities under varying environmental conditions and species combinations.
• Network-based algorithm: Employs a network-based algorithm to integrate enzymatic reaction data with environmental metabolite lists for metabolic prediction.

Scientific Applications:

• Comparative metabolic analysis: Applied to compare metabolic capabilities of different haplotypes of Candidatus Liberibacter solanacearum and the culturable relative Liberibacter crescens.
• Symbiotic interaction exploration: Explored potential complementary metabolite production by co-occurring endosymbionts of the plant phloem-feeding whitefly Bemisia tabaci.

Methodology:

Uses genomic-based simulations to explore metabolic capacities under various environmental conditions and species combinations and employs a network-based algorithm to integrate enzymatic reaction lists (EC numbers) with environmental metabolites (KEGG accessions) for prediction.