Document Type
Article
Original Publication Date
2009
Journal/Book/Conference Title
BMC Systems Biology
Volume
3
Issue
52
DOI of Original Publication
10.1186/1752-0509-3-52
Date of Submission
August 2014
Abstract
Background
Trypanosoma cruzi is a Kinetoplastid parasite of humans and is the cause of Chagas disease, a potentially lethal condition affecting the cardiovascular, gastrointestinal, and nervous systems of the human host. Constraint-based modeling has emerged in the last decade as a useful approach to integrating genomic and other high-throughput data sets with more traditional, experimental data acquired through decades of research and published in the literature.
Results
We present a validated, constraint-based model of the core metabolism of Trypanosoma cruzistrain CL Brener. The model includes four compartments (extracellular space, cytosol, mitochondrion, glycosome), 51 transport reactions, and 93 metabolic reactions covering carbohydrate, amino acid, and energy metabolism. In addition, we make use of several replicate high-throughput proteomic data sets to specifically examine metabolism of the morphological form of T. cruzi in the insect gut (epimastigote stage).
Conclusion
This work demonstrates the utility of constraint-based models for integrating various sources of data (e.g., genomics, primary biochemical literature, proteomics) to generate testable hypotheses. This model represents an approach for the systematic study of T. cruzi metabolism under a wide range of conditions and perturbations, and should eventually aid in the identification of urgently needed novel chemotherapeutic targets.
Rights
© 2009 Roberts et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Is Part Of
VCU Study of Biological Complexity Publications
1752-0509-3-52-s2.xml (123 kB)
1752-0509-3-52-s3.pdf (128 kB)
1752-0509-3-52-s4.pdf (133 kB)
1752-0509-3-52-s5.pdf (134 kB)
Comments
Originally found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1752-0509-3-52