Coupling Metabolic and Community Scale Models for Microbial Communities

Isaac Klapper

Temple University

"Coupling Metabolic and Community Scale Models for Microbial Communities"

Outside of laboratories, microbial communities (biofilms and other types) often exist in relatively stable environments where, on average, resource quality and quantity are predictable. Under such conditions, these communities are able to organize into tuned chemical factories, efficiently turning resources into biomass and waste byproducts. To do so, community scale physical, chemical, and biological constraints must be accommodated. At the cell scale, extensive omics data has enabled detailed, genome scale (GEM) modeling of metabolic response to chemical conditions. These two scale are coupled of course. Techniques to connect GEMs to community scale transport processes will be presented.

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