Section: New Software and Platforms

MetExplore

Keywords: Systems Biology - Bioinformatics

Scientific Description: MetExplore stores metabolic networks of 160 organisms into a relational database. Information about metabolic networks mainly come from BioCyc-like databases. Two BioCyc-like databases contain information about several organisms: PlantCyc and MetaCyc. MetExplore contains also the information about metabolites stored in Metabolome.jp. Note that there is no information about reactions in this database and is only useful to identify compounds from masses. Several genome-scale models designed for Flux Balance Analysis have also been imported into MetExplore. The table below gives details about the sources of the metabolic networks present in MetExplore.

Functional Description: Web-server that allows to build, curate and analyse genome-scale metabolic networks. MetExplore is also able to deal with data from metabolomics experiments by mapping a list of masses or identifiers onto filtered metabolic networks. Finally, it proposes several functions to perform Flux Balance Analysis (FBA). The web-server is mature, it was developed in PHP, JAVA, Javascript and Mysql. MetExplore was started under another name during Ludovic Cottret's PhD in Bamboo, and is now maintained by the MetExplore group at the Inra of Toulouse.

• Participants: Fabien Jourdan, Hubert Charles, Ludovic Cottret and Marie-France Sagot

• Contact: Fabien Jourdan

• URL: http://metexplore.toulouse.inra.fr/metexplore/