Limitations of a metabolic network-based reverse ecology method for inferring host-pathogen interactions.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Host-pathogen interactions are important in a wide range of research fields. Given the importance of metabolic crosstalk between hosts and pathogens, a metabolic network-based reverse ecology method was proposed to infer these interactions. However, the validity of this method remains unclear because of the various explanations presented and the influence of potentially confounding factors that have thus far been neglected.

Results

We re-evaluated the importance of the reverse ecology method for evaluating host-pathogen interactions while statistically controlling for confounding effects using oxygen requirement, genome, metabolic network, and phylogeny data. Our data analyses showed that host-pathogen interactions were more strongly influenced by genome size, pri

SUBMITTER: Takemoto K 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5445277 | biostudies-literature | 2017 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature