Dylan Smith
This is a project for CSCI-4502, Data Mining at CU Boulder. In it I aim to analyze the network characteristics of metabolic networks created from 10 functional subnetworks for 10 different bacterial species. The data for the project was obtained from the Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes using the REST API. The metabolic networks were constructed using the NetworkX library.
Questions
- How do different organisms differ and converge on network structure and resource allotment for different functional modules of the metabolic network?
- Can the network structure of the metabolic network tell us anything interesting about metabolism?
Application Synthetic biology is the field which aspires to genetically engineer biological systems for any number of specific purposes. It is currently limited by the complexity of biological systems and much of this complexity comes down to the interconnected nature of the individual points that make up that system. Network structure is a way to view and investigate this complexity, so any further understanding of this complexity contributes to the aspirations of synthetic biology.