title: Plant metabolic modeling: achieving new insight into metabolism and metabolic engineering.
abstract: Models are used to represent aspects of the real world for specific purposes, and mathematical models have opened up new approaches in studying the behavior and complexity of biological systems. However, modeling is often time-consuming and requires significant computational resources for data development, data analysis, and simulation. Computational modeling has been successfully applied as an aid for metabolic engineering in microorganisms. But such model-based approaches have only recently been extended to plant metabolic engineering, mainly due to greater pathway complexity in plants and their highly compartmentalized cellular structure. Recent progress in plant systems biology and bioinformatics has begun to disentangle this complexity and facilitate the creation of efficient plant metabolic models. This review highlights several aspects of plant metabolic modeling in the context of understanding, predicting and modifying complex plant metabolism. We discuss opportunities for engineering photosynthetic carbon metabolism, sucrose synthesis, and the tricarboxylic acid cycle in leaves and oil synthesis in seeds and the application of metabolic modeling to the study of plant acclimation to the environment. The aim of the review is to offer a current perspective for plant biologists without requiring specialized knowledge of bioinformatics or systems biology.
authors.affiliation: Leibniz Institute of Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research, D-06466 Gatersleben, Germany Institute of Computer Science, Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, 06120 Halle, Germany College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, Islamic Azad University-Karaj Branch, Karaj 31485-313, Iran baghalian@ipk-gatersleben.de.
authors.forename: Kambiz
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Baghalian
authors.affiliation: Leibniz Institute of Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research, D-06466 Gatersleben, Germany.
authors.forename: Mohammad-Reza
authors.initials: MR
authors.lastname: Hajirezaei
authors.affiliation: Institute of Computer Science, Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, 06120 Halle, Germany Faculty of IT, Monash University, Clayton, VIC 3800, Australia.
authors.forename: Falk
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Schreiber
mesh_terms: D000222:Adaptation, Physiological / Q000235:genetics; D019295:Computational Biology / Q000379:methods / Q000639:trends; D003198:Computer Simulation; D018745:Genome, Plant / Q000235:genetics; D060847:Metabolic Engineering / Q000379:methods* / Q000639:trends; D053858:Metabolic Networks and Pathways / Q000235:genetics; D008954:Models, Biological; D010944:Plants / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism*; D049490:Systems Biology / Q000379:methods / Q000639:trends