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- Title
sybil - Efficient constraint-based modelling in R.
- Authors
Gelius-Dietrich, Gabriel; Desouki, Abdelmoneim Amer; Fritzemeier, Claus Jonathan; Lercher, Martin J.
- Abstract
Background Constraint-based analyses of metabolic networks are widely used to simulate the properties of genome-scale metabolic networks. Publicly available implementations tend to be slow, impeding large scale analyses such as the genome-wide computation of pairwise gene knock-outs, or the automated search for model improvements. Furthermore, available implementations cannot easily be extended or adapted by users. Results Here, we present sybil, an open source software library for constraint-based analyses in R; R is a free, platform-independent environment for statistical computing and graphics that is widely used in bioinformatics. Among other functions, sybil currently provides efficient methods for flux-balance analysis (FBA), MOMA, and ROOM that are about ten times faster than previous implementations when calculating the effect of whole-genome single gene deletions in silico on a complete E. coli metabolic model. Conclusions Due to the object-oriented architecture of sybil, users can easily build analysis pipelines in R or even implement their own constraint-based algorithms. Based on its highly efficient communication with different mathematical optimisation programs, sybil facilitates the exploration of high-dimensional optimisation problems on small time scales. Sybil and all its dependencies are open source. Sybil and its documentation are available for download from the comprehensive R archive network (CRAN).
- Subjects
ESCHERICHIA coli; GENOMES; BIOINFORMATICS; COMPUTERS in medicine; MATHEMATICAL optimization
- Publication
BMC Systems Biology, 2013, Vol 7, Issue 1, p1
- ISSN
1752-0509
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1186/1752-0509-7-125