Given the development of a model that approximates well the growth phenotype of a typical E. coli cell, this provides now a straightforward approach to producing in silico E.coli mutants that “encode” different strategies for resource allocation and demonstrate different growth/bioproduction phenotypes. This process is straightforward and can be achieved by changing the chemical reaction rates of mRNA expression of the 3 coarse grain biomolecular classes in the model, and observing the effects of those changes in terms of growth rate and bioproduction rate.
To this end, we produced 6 “mutant” models of the original virtual cell model and simulated those models to observe any changes in the phenotypes of growth rate or bioproduction. The introduced “mutations” in the alternative model are given in the models description.docx file.