Analysis of Functional Interactions of Enzymes in Mycoplasma pneumoniae

Abstract. In an organism proteins perform many biological functions. In the metabolism they act as catalysts in a network of chemical reactions. Many biological functions are integrated through a network of interactions and their characterization is important to the understanding of the orchestrated mechanisms that underlie the machinery of life. In this work we propose a new description of the network of functional interactions among enzymes. We present preliminary results of its application to the metabolism of Mycoplasma pneumoniae. We investigate the importance and conservation of enzyme connectivity in the metabolism and find that some enzymes are highly connected. Additional applications of the network include the easier visualization of enzyme actions and interactions and the identification of incorrect functional annotations. Metabolic Networks, Proteomics, Drug targets