Abstract

MetExplore

Fabien Jourdan, Research Scientist, INRA-MetaboHub

Genome scale metabolic networks provide an informative context for the analysis of metabolic profiles since they gather reactions that consume or product metabolites. This integrative view of metabolism nevertheless implies dealing with genome-scale networks containing thousands of densely connected reactions (7,440 in the latest reconstruction of human metabolic network). To make sense of these large networks, they need to be turned into mathematical objects called graphs (nodes connected by edges) after which dedicated algorithms can be used to identify less dense and more informative sub-networks. Once selected, these sub-networks can be furthered analyzed by visualizing them. MetExplore integrates this global analysis pipeline into a web server freely available containing hundreds of metabolic networks from various organisms. MetExplore also allows network curation, omics data mapping and provide web services to access network content and map chemical libraries.