MetPlast: an R package to evaluate Metabolic Plasticity using Information Theory statistical framework

Abstract

MetPlast, is an R package that provides the functionalities necessary to analyze biological samples metabolic plasticity. This package takes advantage of the statistical framework provided by the Information Theory to quantify and defined metabolic plasticity parameters. Using previous implemented formula based on Shannon entropy we automatize the calculation and visualization of a set of metabolic plasticity indexes including metabolic diversity, metabolome specialization, and metabolite specialization. We use a publicly available metabolic data set on tomato domestication to demonstrate the power of the present tool to evaluate changes in metabolic plasticity parameters. Thus, MetPlast represents a new and invaluable member of the computational metabolomics toolbox, that will certainly help scientists to unveil hidden information in cell metabolomic landscape. Availability and implementationFreely available at https://github.com/danlucio86/MetPlast