Fig. 2.

Essential genes predicted by the models are consistent with known cancer drug targets. A strong enrichment in essential genes and cancer drugs was found among the list of predicted essential genes for colorectal cancer. In grey, genes that cause a reduction of the biomass by 50% in either the healthy or the cancer model, in purple, genes that cause a reduction of biomass in the cancer model and in red, genes that are only essential in cancer and not in the healthy model. Metabolic genes are shown in white. The x-axis represents the databases used to extract known cancer drug targets, whereas the “antimetabolites” and “antineoplastic agents” columns have been extracted from the drug categories in the DrugBank. (For interpretation of the references to colour in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)