Curr Opin Biotechnol. 2018 Jun;51:70-79. doi: 10.1016/j.copbio.2017.11.014. Epub 2017 Dec 7.
ABSTRACT
The growing global threat of antibiotic resistant human pathogens has coincided with improved methods for developing and using genome-scale metabolic network reconstructions. Consequently, there has been an increase in the number of high-quality reconstructions of relevant human and zoonotic pathogens. Novel biomedical applications of pathogen reconstructions focus on three key aspects of pathogen behavior: the evolution of antibiotic resistance, virulence factor production, and host-pathogen interactions. New methods using these reconstructions aim to improve understanding of microbe pathogenicity and guide the development of new therapeutic strategies. This review summarizes the latest ways that genome-scale metabolic network reconstructions have been used to study human pathogens and suggests future applications with the potential to mitigate infectious disease.
PMID:29223465 | PMC:PMC5991985 | DOI:10.1016/j.copbio.2017.11.014