TY - JOUR T1 - A Computational Approach to the Functional Screening of Genomes A1 - Chiarugi, Davide A1 - Degano, Pierpaolo A1 - Marangoni, Roberto Y1 - 2007/09/28 N2 - Author SummaryThe origins of life represent a fascinating problem that has been addressed using different approaches and a wide variety of technologies. A theoretical approach consists of inferring a possible oldest ancestor genome from a well-defined comparison of current ones. A crucial problem concerns the validation of the proposed genome. The direct solution of synthesizing such a genome in a laboratory is often extremely difficult, due to the great complexity of a biological cell. In this paper, we present an approach for evaluating the chances a hypothetical organism has to be really viable, relying on computer simulations. Our method is based on a certain formal language, through which we specify a whole metabolic network, and we study its dynamics, in particular for verifying if a living organism has some fundamental properties, e.g., homeostasis. This approach is not equivalent to a wet-lab one, but it allows for early pruning of most of the inconsistently designed hypothetical organisms, thus saving biologists time and resources. JF - PLOS Computational Biology JA - PLOS Computational Biology VL - 3 IS - 9 UR - https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.0030174 SP - e174 EP - PB - Public Library of Science M3 - doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.0030174 ER -