Metabolic-network-driven analysis of bacterial ecological strategies

摘要

BackgroundThe growth-rate of an organism is an important phenotypic trait, directly affecting its ability to survive in a given environment. Here we present the first large scale computational study of the association between ecological strategies and growth rate across 113 bacterial species, occupying a variety of metabolic habitats. Genomic data are used to reconstruct the species' metabolic networks and habitable metabolic environments. These reconstructions are then used to investigate the typical ecological strategies taken by organisms in terms of two basic species-specific measures: metabolic variability - the ability of a species to survive in a variety of different environments; and co-habitation score vector - the distribution of other species that co-inhabit each environment.