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ABSTRACT: Understanding molecular factors determining local adaptation is a key challenge, particularly relevant for plants, which are sessile organisms coping with a continuously fluctuating environment. Here we introduce a rigorous network-based approach for investigating the relation between geographic location of accessions and heterogeneous molecular phenotypes. We demonstrate for Arabidopsis accessions that not only genotypic variability but also flowering and metabolic phenotypes show a robust pattern of isolation-by-distance. Our approach opens new avenues to investigate relations between geographic origin and heterogeneous molecular phenotypes, like metabolite profiles, which can easily be obtained in species where genome data is not yet available.
Nature Communications 12/2012; 3:1319. · 7.40 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: Flux balance analysis (FBA) together with its extension, dynamic FBA, have proven instrumental for analyzing the robustness and dynamics of metabolic networks by employing only the stoichiometry of the included reactions coupled with adequately chosen objective function. In addition, under the assumption of minimization of metabolic adjustment, dynamic FBA has recently been employed to analyze the transition between metabolic states.
Here, we propose a suite of novel methods for analyzing the dynamics of (internally perturbed) metabolic networks and for quantifying their robustness with limited knowledge of kinetic parameters. Following the biochemically meaningful premise that metabolite concentrations exhibit smooth temporal changes, the proposed methods rely on minimizing the significant fluctuations of metabolic profiles to predict the time-resolved metabolic state, characterized by both fluxes and concentrations. By conducting a comparative analysis with a kinetic model of the Calvin-Benson cycle and a model of plant carbohydrate metabolism, we demonstrate that the principle of regulatory on/off minimization coupled with dynamic FBA can accurately predict the changes in metabolic states.
Our methods outperform the existing dynamic FBA-based modeling alternatives, and could help in revealing the mechanisms for maintaining robustness of dynamic processes in metabolic networks over time.
BMC Systems Biology 03/2012; 6:16. · 3.15 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: Discrimination of metabolic models based on high throughput metabolomics data, reflecting various internal and external perturbations, is essential for identifying the components that contribute to the emerging behavior of metabolic processes. Here, we investigate 12 different models of the mitochondrial electron transport chain (ETC) in Arabidopsis thaliana during dark-induced senescence in order to elucidate the alternative substrates to this metabolic pathway. Our findings demonstrate that the coupling of the proposed computational approach, based on dynamic flux balance analysis, with time-resolved metabolomics data results in model-based confirmations of the hypotheses that, during dark-induced senescence in Arabidopsis, (i) under conditions where the main substrate for the ETC are not fully available, isovaleryl-CoA dehydrogenase and 2-hydroxyglutarate dehydrogenase are able to donate electrons to the ETC, (ii) phytanoyl-CoA does not act even as an indirect substrate of the electron transfer flavoprotein/electron-transfer flavoprotein:ubiquinone oxidoreductase complex, and (iii) the mitochondrial γ-aminobutyric acid transporter has functional significance in maintaining mitochondrial metabolism. Our study provides a basic framework for future in silico studies of alternative pathways in mitochondrial metabolism under extended darkness whereby the role of its components can be computationally discriminated based on available molecular profile data.
Journal of Biological Chemistry 02/2012; 287(14):11122-31. · 4.77 Impact Factor
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ABSTRACT: High-throughput phenotyping technologies in combination with genetic variability for the plant model species Arabidopsis thaliana (Arabidopsis) offer an excellent experimental platform to reveal the effects of different gene combinations on phenotypes. These developments have been coupled with computational approaches to extract information not only from the multidimensional data, capturing various levels of biochemical organization, but also from various morphological and growth-related traits. Nevertheless, the existing methods usually focus on data aggregation which may neglect accession-specific effects. Here we argue that revealing the molecular mechanisms governing a desired set of output traits can be performed by ranking of accessions based on their efficiencies relative to all other analyzed accessions. To this end, we propose a framework for evaluating accessions via their relative efficiencies which establish a relationship between multidimensional system's inputs and outputs from different environmental conditions. The framework combines data envelopment analysis (DEA) with a novel valency index characterizing the difference in congruence between the efficiency rankings of accessions under various conditions. We illustrate the advantages of the proposed approach for analyzing genetic variability on a publicly available data set comprising quantitative data on metabolic and morphological traits for 23 Arabidopsis accessions under three conditions of nitrogen availability. In addition, we extend the proposed framework to identify the set of traits displaying the highest influence on ranking based on the relative efficiencies of the considered accessions. As an outlook, we discuss how the proposed framework can be combined with well-established statistical techniques to further dissect the relationship between natural variability and metabolism.
Frontiers in plant science. 01/2012; 3:217.
