MOTIVATION: A key computational problem in metabolic engineering is finding efficient metabolic routes from a source to a target compound in genome-scale reaction networks, potentially considering the addition of new reactions. Efficiency can be based on many factors, such as route lengths, atoms conserved and the number of new reactions, and the new enzymes to catalyze them, added to the route. Fast algorithms are needed to systematically search these large genome-scale reaction networks. RESULTS: We present the algorithm used in the new RouteSearch tool within the Pathway Tools software. This algorithm is based on a general Branch-and-Bound search and involves constructing a network of atom mappings to facilitate efficient searching. As far as we know, it is the first published algorithm that finds guaranteed optimal routes where atom conservation is part of the optimality criteria. RouteSearch includes a graphical user interface that speeds user understanding of its search results. We evaluated the algorithm on five example metabolic-engineering problems from the literature; for one problem the published solution was equivalent to the optimal route found by RouteSearch; for the remaining four problems, RouteSearch found the published solution as one of its best-scored solutions. These problems were each solved in less than 5 s of computational time. AVAILABILITY AND IMPLEMENTATION: RouteSearch is accessible at BioCyc.org by using the menu command Metabolism --> Metabolic RouteSearch and by downloading Pathway Tools. Pathway Tools software is freely available to academic users, and for a fee to commercial users. Download from: http://biocyc.org/download.shtml.
MOTIVATION: A key computational problem in metabolic engineering is finding efficient metabolic routes from a source to a target compound in genome-scale reaction networks, potentially considering the addition of new reactions. Efficiency can be based on many factors, such as route lengths, atoms conserved and the number of new reactions, and the new enzymes to catalyze them, added to the route. Fast algorithms are needed to systematically search these large genome-scale reaction networks. RESULTS: We present the algorithm used in the new RouteSearch tool within the Pathway Tools software. This algorithm is based on a general Branch-and-Bound search and involves constructing a network of atom mappings to facilitate efficient searching. As far as we know, it is the first published algorithm that finds guaranteed optimal routes where atom conservation is part of the optimality criteria. RouteSearch includes a graphical user interface that speeds user understanding of its search results. We evaluated the algorithm on five example metabolic-engineering problems from the literature; for one problem the published solution was equivalent to the optimal route found by RouteSearch; for the remaining four problems, RouteSearch found the published solution as one of its best-scored solutions. These problems were each solved in less than 5 s of computational time. AVAILABILITY AND IMPLEMENTATION: RouteSearch is accessible at BioCyc.org by using the menu command Metabolism --> Metabolic RouteSearch and by downloading Pathway Tools. Pathway Tools software is freely available to academic users, and for a fee to commercial users. Download from: http://biocyc.org/download.shtml.
Authors: Peter D Karp; Mario Latendresse; Suzanne M Paley; Markus Krummenacker; Quang D Ong; Richard Billington; Anamika Kothari; Daniel Weaver; Thomas Lee; Pallavi Subhraveti; Aaron Spaulding; Carol Fulcher; Ingrid M Keseler; Ron Caspi Journal: Brief Bioinform Date: 2015-10-10 Impact factor: 11.622
Authors: Peter D Karp; Richard Billington; Ron Caspi; Carol A Fulcher; Mario Latendresse; Anamika Kothari; Ingrid M Keseler; Markus Krummenacker; Peter E Midford; Quang Ong; Wai Kit Ong; Suzanne M Paley; Pallavi Subhraveti Journal: Brief Bioinform Date: 2019-07-19 Impact factor: 11.622
Authors: Pablo Carbonell; Andrew Currin; Adrian J Jervis; Nicholas J W Rattray; Neil Swainston; Cunyu Yan; Eriko Takano; Rainer Breitling Journal: Nat Prod Rep Date: 2016-05-17 Impact factor: 13.423