Abstract:
Lipids are necessary compounds for organisms and industries. Nowadays the production of lipids from plant is not enough for market. So, alternative source have been searched. In this study, Saccharomyces cerevisiae was used as a representative model to study lipid metabolism because its complete genome sequence is known.A S. cerevisiae genome-scale metabolic model was reconstructed by implementing the information including biochemical reactions and a biomass equation from previously published work. These qualitative data was converted to quantitative model by reconstructing a stoichiometric model based on flux balance analysis (FBA) on Whats Best program with an added-in Microsoft Excel. This model called the implemented Forsters model was checked if it was suitable to study lipid metabolism by evaluating the lipid pathways including phospholipids, triacylglycerol, sterol, and sphingolipid biosynthesis. To get a better model, the model was modified as follows; (1) 3 reactions in the sphingolipid were added, (2) transport reactions of two phospholipids between cytoplasm and mitochondria were included, and (3) sphingolipid was included in the biomass equation while phosphatidylserine was excluded. Then 4 case studies were performed using the modified Forsters model to study lipid metabolism. In case 1, we found that there are 4 genes in central metabolism and 26 genes in lipid metabolism that are essential on lipid production. In case 2, we investigated that deletion of a specific pathway cannot be studied by using this model due to the limitation of this technique regarding the constant coefficient of composition in biomass equation. This model could be applied to in silico gene cloning in case 3, but it may not work in reality. In the last case, we studied enzyme sensitivity in reactions involving NADPH and ACCOA. We found that either reduction or enhancement of the enzyme activity did not change the optimal flux production rate.