Home Research People Publications Software Download Courses Photos Contact Elhanan Borenstein, Ph.D. NetSeed NetSeed is a software package for identifying the seed sets of networks and is available as an online tool (NetSeed>Web) and as a Perl module (NetSeed>Perl). » NetSeed>Web   Determine the seed set of a network online. » NetSeed>Perl   Download the Perl module to add NetSeed's functionality to your custom analysis programs. » NetSeed Manual   Learn how to use NetSeed in your analysis. Trying it out? Check out our example networks. Understanding the NetSeed Analysis Borenstein et al. (2008) introduced the seed set in the context of metabolic networks. The seed set of a network is the minimal subset of nodes in a directed network required to access every node in the network. For a metabolic network constructed with nodes representing compounds and edges representing reactions that link substrates to products, the seed set therefore represents the minimal subset of the compounds in the network that cannot be synthesized from other compounds in the network (and hence are exogenously acquired) and whose existence permits the production of all other compounds in the network. The seed set of a metabolic network was shown to serve as a successful proxy for the habitat of the organism. For a complete description of the science and algorithms behind network seed analysis, please refer to Borenstein et al. (2008) (supporting information). If you are using NetSeed please cite the following paper: Rogan Carr and Elhanan Borenstein (2012) NetSeed: A network-based reverse-ecology tool for calculating the metabolic interface of an organism with its environment, Bioinformatics, 28(5), 734-735, 2012.