NEMETEX: a Python software for the visualisation of the network of metabolic exchanges

Summary Motivation Microorganisms have a pivotal role in ecology and human health and form complex networks where different species can interact and exchange a range of different compounds. Flux balance analysis can offer an insight into the production and the absorption of these metabolic compounds, but frequently results are difficult to visualise and interpret. Additionally, a clear understanding of the roles of microbial species in the community requires the integration of different information sources, including relative abundance, taxonomy and compounds exchange rate. Results To fill-in this gap the command-line tool NEMETEX (NEtwork for METabolic Exchanges) was developed to provide a graphical representation of the metabolites exchanged, joined with interactive visualisation of numerical data. This approach can undoubtedly represent an easy way to investigate high-throughput results obtained from metagenomics and flux balance analysis, providing a more direct interpretation of the data. Availability and implementation This program, accessory utilities, and their documentation are freely available at https://github.com/palakela/NEMETEX