WEbcoli: an interactive and asynchronous web application for in silico design and analysis of genome-scale E.coli model.

SUMMARY: WEbcoli is a WEb application for in silico designing, analyzing and engineering Escherichia coli metabolism. It is devised and implemented using advanced web technologies, thereby leading to enhanced usability and dynamic web accessibility. As a main feature, the WEbcoli system provides a user-friendly rich web interface, allowing users to virtually design and synthesize mutant strains derived from the genome-scale wild-type E.coli model and to customize pathways of interest through a graph editor. In addition, constraints-based flux analysis can be conducted for quantifying metabolic fluxes and charactering the physiological and metabolic states under various genetic and/or environmental conditions. AVAILABILITY: WEbcoli is freely accessible at http://webcoli.org. CONTACT: cheld@nus.edu.sg.