Natural computation meta-heuristics for the in silico optimization of microbial strains
Artikel i vetenskaplig tidskrift, 2008

Background: One of the greatest challenges in Metabolic Engineering is to develop quantitative models and algorithms to identify a set of genetic manipulations that will result in a microbial strain with a desirable metabolic phenotype which typically means having a high yield/ productivity. This challenge is not only due to the inherent complexity of the metabolic and regulatory networks, but also to the lack of appropriate modelling and optimization tools. To this end, Evolutionary Algorithms (EAs) have been proposed for in silico metabolic engineering, for example, to identify sets of gene deletions towards maximization of a desired physiological objective function. In this approach, each mutant strain is evaluated by resorting to the simulation of its phenotype using the Flux-Balance Analysis (FBA) approach, together with the premise that microorganisms have maximized their growth along natural evolution. Results: This work reports on improved EAs, as well as novel Simulated Annealing (SA) algorithms to address the task of in silico metabolic engineering. Both approaches use a variable size set-based representation, thereby allowing the automatic finding of the best number of gene deletions necessary for achieving a given productivity goal. The work presents extensive computational experiments, involving four case studies that consider the production of succinic and lactic acid as the targets, by using S. cerevisiae and E. coli as model organisms. The proposed algorithms are able to reach optimal/ near-optimal solutions regarding the production of the desired compounds and presenting low variability among the several runs. Conclusion: The results show that the proposed SA and EA both perform well in the optimization task. A comparison between them is favourable to the SA in terms of consistency in obtaining optimal solutions and faster convergence. In both cases, the use of variable size representations allows the automati c discovery of the approximate number of gene deletions, without compromising the optimality of the solutions. © 2008 Rocha et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.

Författare

M. Rocha

Universidade do Minho

P. Maia

Universidade do Minho

R. Mendes

Universidade do Minho

J. P. Pinto

Universidade do Minho

E. C. Ferreira

Universidade do Minho

Jens B Nielsen

Chalmers, Kemi- och bioteknik, Livsvetenskaper

K. R. Patil

Danmarks Tekniske Universitet (DTU)

I. Rocha

Universidade do Minho

BMC Bioinformatics

14712105 (eISSN)

Vol. 9 499- 499

Styrkeområden

Livsvetenskaper och teknik (2010-2018)

Ämneskategorier

Bioinformatik och systembiologi

Kemi

DOI

10.1186/1471-2105-9-499

Mer information

Senast uppdaterat

2018-02-28