Our new paper “Use of a global metabolic network to predict organismal metabolic networks” has been published in Scientific Reports. In this work we define a new framework, the global network, to use in analyzing cellular processes.
The global framework springs from a concept put forth by Alfred Whitehead in the 1920s. Alfred describes in his work the Res Extansa, or the instances of actual knowledge we currently have. He surmises then that a Res Potentia exists, or the possible knowledge. We liken the Res Extansa to all available and known organismal networks and build the Res Potentia, or global network, as the union of all organismal networks. This global network will now provide a broad overview of all the possible usages of metabolism and aid in the analysis of how it came to be.
We use metabolism as a test case and demonstrate its value by predicting organismal metabolic networks.
To predict organismal metabolic networks the global framework is paired with sequence homology and we find that our methodology compares favorably to modern database information. Furthermore, when we use our new validation technique of examining connectedness in the graph topology we find that our predictions far exceed the current annotations for organismal metabolic networks.
—Adam Pah