Double and multiple knockout simulations for genome-scale metabolic network reconstructions

Constraint-based modeling of genome-scale metabolic network reconstructions has become a widely used approach in computational biology. Flux coupling analysis is a constraint-based method that analyses the impact of single reaction knockouts on other reactions in the network. We present an extension of flux coupling analysis for double and multiple gene or reaction knockouts, and develop corresponding algorithms for an in silico simulation. To evaluate our method, we perform a full single and double knockout analysis on a selection of genome-scale metabolic network reconstructions and compare the results. A prototype implementation of double knockout simulation is available at http://hoverboard.io/L4FC.