Network Visualization Tools to Enhance Metabolic Engineering Platforms

Abstract

In this work, we present a software platform for the visualization of metabolic models, which is implemented as a plug-in for the open-source metabolic engineering (ME) platform OptFlux. The tools provided by this plug-in allow the visualization of the models (or parts of the models) combined with the results from operations applied over these models, mainly regarding phenotype simulation, strain optimization and pathway analysis. The tool provides a generic input/ output framework that can import/ export layouts from different formats used by other tools, namely XGMML and SBML. Thus, this work provides a bridge between network visualization and ME. © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2013.