Heterogeneous popularity of metabolic reactions from evolution

The composition of cellular metabolism is different across species. Empirical data reveal that bacterial species contain similar numbers of metabolic reactions but that the cross-species popularity of reactions is so heterogenous that some reactions are found in all the species while others are in just few species, characterized by a power-law distribution with the exponent one. Introducing an evolutionary model concretizing the stochastic recruitment of chemical reactions into the metabolism of different species at different times and their inheritance to descendants, we demonstrate that the exponential growth of the number of species containing a reaction and the saturated recruitment rate of brand-new reactions lead to the empirically identified power-law popularity distribution. Furthermore, the structural characteristics of metabolic networks and the species' phylogeny in our simulations agree well with empirical observations.Comment: Main: 5 pages, 4 figures, Supplemental Material: 4 pages, 6 figure

Comparing the Heterogeneity of Copper-Binding Characteristics for Two Different-Sized Soil Humic Acid Fractions Using Fluorescence Quenching Combined with 2D-COS

Heterogeneous distributions of copper-binding characteristics were compared for two ultrafiltered size fractions of a soil HA using fluorescence quenching combined with two-dimensional correlation spectroscopy (2D-COS). The apparent shapes of the original synchronous fluorescence spectra and the extent of the fluorescence quenching upon the addition of copper were similar for the two fractions. The stability constants calculated at their highest peaks were not significantly different. However, the 2D-COS results revealed that the fluorescence quenching behaviors were strongly affected by the associated wavelengths and the fraction's size. The spectral change preferentially occurred in the wavelength order of 467 nm → 451 nm → 357 nm for the 1–10 K fraction and of 376 nm → 464 nm for the >100 K fraction. The extent of the binding affinities exactly followed the sequential orders interpreted from the 2D-COS, and they exhibited the distinctive ranges of the logarithmic values from 5.86 to 4.91 and from 6.48 to 5.95 for the 1–10 K and the >100 K fractions, respectively. Our studies demonstrated that fluorescence quenching combined with 2D-COS could be successfully utilized to give insight into the chemical heterogeneity associated with metal-binding sites within the relatively homogeneous HA size fractions

Correlation-enhanced viable core in metabolic networks

Cellular ingredient concentrations can be stabilized by adjusting generation and consumption rates through multiple pathways. To explore the portion of cellular metabolism equipped with multiple pathways, we categorize individual metabolic reactions and compounds as viable or inviable: A compound is viable if processed by two or more reactions, and a reaction is viable if all of its substrates and products are viable. Using this classification, we identify the maximal subnetwork of viable nodes, referred to as the {\it viable core}, in bipartite metabolic networks across thousands of species. The obtained viable cores are remarkably larger than those in degree-preserving randomized networks, while their broad degree distributions commonly enable the viable cores to shrink gradually as reaction nodes are deleted. We demonstrate that the positive degree-degree correlations of the empirical networks may underlie the enlarged viable cores compared to the randomized networks. By investigating the relation between degree and cross-species frequency of metabolic compounds and reactions, we elucidate the evolutionary origin of the correlations.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figure