Source code overview

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Source code overview by Ciro Santilli 34 Updated 2024-10-13 Created 1970-01-01
The key model database is located in the source code at reconstruction/ecoli/flat.
Let's try to understand some interesting looking, with a special focus on our understanding of the tiny E. Coli K-12 MG1655 operon thrLABC part of the metabolism, which we have well understood at Section "E. Coli K-12 MG1655 operon thrLABC".
We'll realize that a lot of data and IDs come from/match BioCyc quite closely.
Before we start, there is one major thing missing thing in the current model: promoters/transcription factor interactions are not modelled due to lack/low quality of experimental data: github.com/CovertLab/WholeCellEcoliRelease/issues/21. They just have a magic direct "transcription factor to gene" relationship, encoded at reconstruction/ecoli/flat/foldChanges.tsv in terms of type "if this is present, such protein is expressed 10x more". Transcription units are not implemented at all it appears.
  • reconstruction/ecoli/flat/compartments.tsv contains cellular compartment information: 
    "abbrev" "id"
"n" "CCO-BAC-NUCLEOID"
"j" "CCO-CELL-PROJECTION"
"w" "CCO-CW-BAC-NEG"
"c" "CCO-CYTOSOL"
"e" "CCO-EXTRACELLULAR"
"m" "CCO-MEMBRANE"
"o" "CCO-OUTER-MEM"
"p" "CCO-PERI-BAC"
"l" "CCO-PILUS"
"i" "CCO-PM-BAC-NEG"
  • reconstruction/ecoli/flat/promoters.tsv contains promoter information. Simple file, sample lines: 
    "position" "direction" "id" "name"
148 "+" "PM00249" "thrLp"
    corresponds to E. Coli K-12 MG1655 promoter thrLp, which starts as position 148.
  • reconstruction/ecoli/flat/proteins.tsv contains protein information. Sample line corresponding to e. Coli K-12 MG1655 gene thrA: 
    "aaCount" "name" "seq" "comments" "codingRnaSeq" "mw" "location" "rnaId" "id" "geneId"
[91, 46, 38, 44, 12, 53, 30, 63, 14, 46, 89, 34, 23, 30, 29, 51, 34, 4, 20, 0, 69] "ThrA" "MRVL..." "Location information from Ecocyc dump." "AUGCGAGUGUUG..." [0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 89103.51099999998, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0] ["c"] "EG10998_RNA" "ASPKINIHOMOSERDEHYDROGI-MONOMER" "EG10998"
    so we understand that:
    • aaCount: amino acid count, how many of each of the 20 proteinogenic amino acid are there
    • seq: full sequence, using the single letter abbreviation of the proteinogenic amino acids
    • mw; molecular weight? The 11 components appear to be given at reconstruction/ecoli/flat/scripts/unifyBulkFiles.py: 
      molecular_weight_keys = [
  '23srRNA',
  '16srRNA',
  '5srRNA',
  'tRNA',
  'mRNA',
  'miscRNA',
  'protein',
  'metabolite',
  'water',
  'DNA',
  'RNA' # nonspecific RNA
  ]
      so they simply classify the weight? Presumably this exists for complexes that have multiple classes?
    • location: cell compartment where the protein is present, c defined at reconstruction/ecoli/flat/compartments.tsv as cytoplasm, as expected for something that will make an amino acid
  • reconstruction/ecoli/flat/rnas.tsv: TODO vs transcriptionUnits.tsv. Sample lines: 
    "halfLife" "name" "seq" "type" "modifiedForms" "monomerId" "comments" "mw" "location" "ntCount" "id" "geneId" "microarray expression"
174.0 "ThrA [RNA]" "AUGCGAGUGUUG..." "mRNA" [] "ASPKINIHOMOSERDEHYDROGI-MONOMER" "" [0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 790935.00399999996, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0] ["c"] [553, 615, 692, 603] "EG10998_RNA" "EG10998" 0.0005264904
    • halfLife: half-life
    • mw: molecular weight, same as in reconstruction/ecoli/flat/proteins.tsv. This molecule only have weight in the mRNA class, as expected, as it just codes for a protein
    • location: same as in reconstruction/ecoli/flat/proteins.tsv
    • ntCount: nucleotide count for each of the ATGC
    • microarray expression: presumably refers to DNA microarray for gene expression profiling, but what measure exactly?
  • reconstruction/ecoli/flat/sequence.fasta: FASTA DNA sequence, first two lines: 
    >E. coli K-12 MG1655 U00096.2 (1 to 4639675 = 4639675 bp)
AGCTTTTCATTCTGACTGCAACGGGCAATATGTCTCTGTGTGGATTAAAAAAAGAGTGTCTGATAGCAGCTTCTG
  • reconstruction/ecoli/flat/transcriptionUnits.tsv: transcription units. We can observe for example the two different transcription units of the E. Coli K-12 MG1655 operon thrLABC in the lines: 
    "expression_rate" "direction" "right" "terminator_id"  "name"    "promoter_id" "degradation_rate" "id"       "gene_id"                                   "left"
0.0               "f"         310     ["TERM0-1059"]   "thrL"    "PM00249"     0.198905992329492 "TU0-42486" ["EG11277"]                                  148
657.057317358791  "f"         5022    ["TERM_WC-2174"] "thrLABC" "PM00249"     0.231049060186648 "TU00178"   ["EG10998", "EG10999", "EG11000", "EG11277"] 148
  • reconstruction/ecoli/flat/genes.tsv 
    "length" "name"                      "seq"             "rnaId"      "coordinate" "direction" "symbol" "type" "id"      "monomerId"
66       "thr operon leader peptide" "ATGAAACGCATT..." "EG11277_RNA" 189         "+"         "thrL"   "mRNA" "EG11277" "EG11277-MONOMER"
2463     "ThrA"                      "ATGCGAGTGTTG"    "EG10998_RNA" 336         "+"         "thrA"   "mRNA" "EG10998" "ASPKINIHOMOSERDEHYDROGI-MONOMER"
  • reconstruction/ecoli/flat/metabolites.tsv contains metabolite information. Sample lines: 
    "id"                       "mw7.2" "location"
"HOMO-SER"                 119.12  ["n", "j", "w", "c", "e", "m", "o", "p", "l", "i"]
"L-ASPARTATE-SEMIALDEHYDE" 117.104 ["n", "j", "w", "c", "e", "m", "o", "p", "l", "i"]
    In the case of the enzyme thrA, one of the two reactions it catalyzes is "L-aspartate 4-semialdehyde" into "Homoserine".
    Starting from the enzyme page: biocyc.org/gene?orgid=ECOLI&id=EG10998 we reach the reaction page: biocyc.org/ECOLI/NEW-IMAGE?type=REACTION&object=HOMOSERDEHYDROG-RXN which has reaction ID HOMOSERDEHYDROG-RXN, and that page which clarifies the IDs:
    so these are the compounds that we care about.
  • reconstruction/ecoli/flat/reactions.tsv contains chemical reaction information. Sample lines: 
    "reaction id" "stoichiometry" "is reversible" "catalyzed by"

"HOMOSERDEHYDROG-RXN-HOMO-SER/NAD//L-ASPARTATE-SEMIALDEHYDE/NADH/PROTON.51."
  {"NADH[c]": -1, "PROTON[c]": -1, "HOMO-SER[c]": 1, "L-ASPARTATE-SEMIALDEHYDE[c]": -1, "NAD[c]": 1}
  false
  ["ASPKINIIHOMOSERDEHYDROGII-CPLX", "ASPKINIHOMOSERDEHYDROGI-CPLX"]

"HOMOSERDEHYDROG-RXN-HOMO-SER/NADP//L-ASPARTATE-SEMIALDEHYDE/NADPH/PROTON.53."
  {"NADPH[c]": -1, "NADP[c]": 1, "PROTON[c]": -1, "L-ASPARTATE-SEMIALDEHYDE[c]": -1, "HOMO-SER[c]": 1
  false
  ["ASPKINIIHOMOSERDEHYDROGII-CPLX", "ASPKINIHOMOSERDEHYDROGI-CPLX"]
    • catalized by: here we see ASPKINIHOMOSERDEHYDROGI-CPLX, which we can guess is a protein complex made out of ASPKINIHOMOSERDEHYDROGI-MONOMER, which is the ID for the thrA we care about! This is confirmed in complexationReactions.tsv.
  • reconstruction/ecoli/flat/complexationReactions.tsv contains information about chemical reactions that produce protein complexes: 
    "process" "stoichiometry" "id" "dir"
"complexation"
  [
    {
      "molecule": "ASPKINIHOMOSERDEHYDROGI-CPLX",
      "coeff": 1,
      "type": "proteincomplex",
      "location": "c",
      "form": "mature"
    },
    {
      "molecule": "ASPKINIHOMOSERDEHYDROGI-MONOMER",
      "coeff": -4,
      "type": "proteinmonomer",
      "location": "c",
      "form": "mature"
    }
  ]
"ASPKINIHOMOSERDEHYDROGI-CPLX_RXN"
1
    The coeff is how many monomers need to get together for form the final complex. This can be seen from the Summary section of ecocyc.org/gene?orgid=ECOLI&id=ASPKINIHOMOSERDEHYDROGI-MONOMER:
    Aspartate kinase I / homoserine dehydrogenase I comprises a dimer of ThrA dimers. Although the dimeric form is catalytically active, the binding equilibrium dramatically favors the tetrameric form. The aspartate kinase and homoserine dehydrogenase activities of each ThrA monomer are catalyzed by independent domains connected by a linker region.
    Fantastic literature summary! Can't find that in database form there however.
  • reconstruction/ecoli/flat/proteinComplexes.tsv contains protein complex information: 
    "name" "comments" "mw" "location" "reactionId" "id"
"aspartate kinase / homoserine dehydrogenase"
""
[0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 356414.04399999994, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0]
["c"]
"ASPKINIHOMOSERDEHYDROGI-CPLX_RXN"
"ASPKINIHOMOSERDEHYDROGI-CPLX"
  • reconstruction/ecoli/flat/protein_half_lives.tsv contains the half-life of proteins. Very few proteins are listed however for some reason.
  • reconstruction/ecoli/flat/tfIds.csv: transcription factors information: 
    "TF"   "geneId"  "oneComponentId"  "twoComponentId" "nonMetaboliteBindingId" "activeId" "notes"
"arcA" "EG10061" "PHOSPHO-ARCA"    "PHOSPHO-ARCA"
"fnr"  "EG10325" "FNR-4FE-4S-CPLX" "FNR-4FE-4S-CPLX"
"dksA" "EG10230"
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