In silico prediction of metabolic trait robustness in microbial cells.

TRAEV predicts evolutionary robustness of metabolic traits in Saccharomyces cerevisiae by generating environment-dependent trait–fitness trajectories and quantifying them with RS and TS.

• Why it matters: Adaptive evolution during industrial selection can erode desired metabolic traits, but it is unresolved how to predict their evolutionary robustness in specific application environments.
• What they did: TRAEV uses constraint-based metabolic models to predict environment-dependent trait–fitness dependencies and applies Monte Carlo-based perturbation analysis to model stochastic adaptive evolution.
• The result: Validated in engineered Saccharomyces cerevisiae pigmentation and aroma generation traits in multiple wine strains of Saccharomyces cerevisiae, TRAEV enables in silico guidance for strain development and process design.