C1Net Workshop on Metabolic Modelling
15-19 December 2014, St Anne's College, Oxford
Introduction
Redirecting an organism’s metabolism towards novel products raises a number of design issues. What is the impact of the new pathway on the cell's energy and redox metabolism? Can the precursor and coenzyme requirements be satisfied? Should some parts of the metabolic network be blocked off to ensure the most efficient routes to the product are favoured? Answering these questions needs tools that can compute and compare feasible routes through the cell's metabolic network, as well as methods for defining and representing the metabolic network in a way the tools can use. This is the domain of structural analysis of metabolism, and techniques such as elementary modes analysis and flux balance analysis. This combined theoretical and practical course will explain the theory behind these techniques and give hands-on experience of calculating feasible and optimal routes through metabolic networks. It will be presented by David Fell and his colleagues in the Cell Systems Modelling Group of Oxford Brookes University. The principles of kinetic modelling and the principles of changing metabolic fluxes by altered enzyme expression levels will figure in a subsequent follow-on course.
