Revista de informática y biología de sistemas

Damages in Metabolic Pathways: Computational Approaches

Abstract

Nruthya Lakshminarasimhan and Somnath Tagore

Damage analysis in metabolic pathways is one of the most highlighted fields in systems biology area. Metabolic errors are studied with respect to inherited enzyme deficiencies. The damages usually occur due to changes in a particular enzymatic reaction or deletion of a step. Some enzyme disorders can also cause the particular reaction not to occur causing accumulation or reduced presence of a metabolite. This leads to dysfunction and disease state. Furthermore, the deletion of a path may change the end product of a reaction and can give rise to disorders. Thus, if the pathway leading to these changes can be determined, it would be easier to determine the disorders. Various statistical methods have been employed to determine the damages in the metabolic pathway. One such method is graph analysis technique. Here a graph is represented in the form of nodes and edges and the various properties may be determined. The wet lab results may be interpreted using statistics. Other studies of metabolomics can be performed using flux based analysis, fourier -transformation, Lp and power laws.