Extraction of Modules from the Metabolic Pathways with Phylogenetic Profile

The concept of modularity assumes that functionality can be partitioned into a collection of modules. Each module is a discrete entity of elementary components and performs an identifiable task, separable from the functions of other modules [3]. As the modules in the protein 3D structure can be related to molecular functions, the modules in the protein network may be related to cellular functions. In fact, a recent study suggests that the modularity is also seen in the metabolic network. Here, we attempt to extract modules from the metabolic network, using the similarity of the phylogenetic profile of 77 distinct organisms.