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Abstract
Classifying organisms into an ordered scheme is important in understanding the fundamental biology of life. Traditionally, trees based on 16S rRNA sequences are the main source for studying phylogeny of the genomes. The advent of new molecular techniques such as metabolic network reconstruction and simulations has opened new avenues to compare the organisms.
A metabolic network consists of all chemical transformations or reactions in the cell, with the metabolites being interconnected by enzyme-catalyzed reactions. Many enzymes exist in numerous species while others occur only in a few. Phylogenetic analysis of these metabolic components (substrates, products, cofactors, and enzymes) might expand the understanding of the evolutionary processes.
We developed a novel method based on the unique features of each organism from which we can generate the comparison trees. The Metabolic pathway component (MPC) based comparison trees clusters the organisms according to their functional groups and revealed the relationship between different organisms from a physiological perspective yielding new insights about the organisms.
