A Beginner’s Guide to the COBRA Toolbox

COBRA toolbox is one of the most popular tools for systems biology analyses using genome-scale metabolic reconstructions. The toolbox permits the use of many constraint-based analytical methods for examining characteristics of metabolism in the biosystems ranging in complexity from single cells to microbial communities and ultimately multicellular organisms. The toolbox has a number of different variants that can be used depending on a user's choice of programming language. Here, I provide a basic tutorial for beginners that plan to use the original MATLAB version of the toolbox.