Metabolic Modeling of Arthrospira sp. PCC 8005 - Network Definition and Experimental Validation

Metabolic modeling is a valuable tool for studying microbial metabolism and has broad applications across fields like biotechnology, medicine, and environmental science. The construction of metabolic networks is crucial in this process, though their development presents significant challenges. While genome-scale networks offer detailed insights, they are computationally demanding, and smaller networks are often too simplified. This study discusses a methodology to derive a metabolic network of intermediate size by combining biological knowledge, experimental data, and mathematical tools to refine the network definition. The present study focuses on the modeling of photosynthetic cyanobacteria Arthrospira sp. PCC 8005 and experimental validation is achieved using cultures in continuous mode. The procedure is effective, yielding promising results, and metabolic analyses show predictive capabilities that are in agreement with existing studies while studying the impact of different nitrogen sources on the growth of cyanobacteria.