PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Andrew S. Krueger
AU  - Christian Munck
AU  - Gautam Dantas
AU  - George M. Church
AU  - James Galagan
AU  - Joseph Lehár
AU  - Morten O.A. Sommer
TI  - Simulating serial-target antibacterial drug synergies using flux balance analysis
AID  - 10.1101/030791
DP  - 2015 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 030791
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2015/11/06/030791.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2015/11/06/030791.full
AB  - Flux balance analysis (FBA) is an increasingly useful approach for modeling the behavior of metabolic systems. However, standard FBA modeling of genetic knockouts can not predict drug combination synergies observed between serial metabolic targets, even though such synergies give rise to some of the most widely used antibiotic treatments. Here we extend FBA modeling to simulate responses to chemical inhibitors at varying concentrations, by diverting enzymatic flux to a waste reaction. This flux diversion yields very similar qualitative predictions to prior methods for single target activity. However, we find very different predictions for combinations, where flux diversion, which mimics the kinetics of competitive metabolic inhibitors, can explain serial target synergies between metabolic enzyme inhibitors that we confirmed in Escherichia coli cultures. FBA flux diversion opens the possibility for more accurate genome-scale predictions of drug synergies, which can be used to suggest treatments for infections and other diseases.