IMFLer: A Web Application for Interactive Metabolic Flux Analysis and Visualization
Publication: Journal of Computational Biology
Volume 28, Issue Number 10
Abstract
Increasing genome-wide data in biological sciences and medicine has contributed to the development of a variety of visualization tools. Several automatic, semiautomatic, and manual visualization tools have already been developed. Some even have integrated flux balance analysis (FBA), but in most cases, it depends on separately installed third party software that is proprietary and does not allow customization of its functionality and has many restrictions for easy data distribution and analysis. In this study, we present an interactive metabolic flux analyzer and visualizer (IMFLer)—a static single-page web application that enables the reading and management of metabolic model layout maps, as well as immediate visualization of results from both FBA and flux variability analysis (FVA). IMFLer uses the Escher Builder tool to load, show, edit, and save metabolic pathway maps. This makes IMFLer an attractive and easily applicable tool with a user-friendly interface. Moreover, it allows to faster interpret results from FBA and FVA and improves data interoperability by using a standardized file format for the genome-scale metabolic model. IMFLer is a fully open-source tool that enables the rapid visualization and interpretation of the results of FBA and FVA with no time setup and no programming skills required, available at https://lv-csbg.github.io/IMFLer/.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Computational Biology
Volume 28 • Issue Number 10 • October 2021
Pages: 1021 - 1032
PubMed: 34424732
Copyright
Copyright 2021, Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers.
History
Published online: 13 October 2021
Published in print: October 2021
Published ahead of print: 23 August 2021
Topics
Authors
Authors' Contributions
R.P. carried out conceptualization, methodology, software, data curation, visualization, investigation, validation, and writing—reviewing and editing. E.S. carried out validation and writing—reviewing and editing. A.P. carried out visualization, investigation, supervision, and writing—original draft preparation and validation.
Author Disclosure Statement
No conflict of interest exists: we wish to confirm that there are no known conflicts of interest associated with this publication and there has been no significant financial support for this study that could have influenced its outcome.
Funding Information
This study was supported by ERASynBio project ES RTD-IP-17 “Control of engineered metabolism by flowering and temperature-triggered plant regulatory networks” (SMARTPLANTS); by Latvian Council of Science project LZP2018/14 (lzp-2018/1-0101); and supported by European Regional Development Fund Postdoctoral research aid 1.1.1.2/VIAA/2/18/278. This study was supported by University of Latvia under project “Climate change and its impacts on sustainability of natural resources” (Nr. Y9-B040-ZF-N-270).
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