A set of microbes in an environment can either exist as a consortium (i.e. with co-metabolic associations) or they might thrive independently. Considering these two possibilities (of bacterial co-existence), Global Mapper module of iVikodak provides to end-users the choice of two distinct algorithmic work-flows viz. 'Co-metabolism' and 'Independent Contributions'. The principle behind these two work-flows is as follows.

                 

Co-Metabolism: The co-metabolism algorithm is based on the underlying assumption that the genes/ enzymes expressed by various microbes residing in an environment may pool together and contribute to the functioning of specific metabolic pathway(s). Therefore, the effective abundance of a metabolic pathway (in an environment with co-metabolising microbes) is expected to be a function of the total enzyme pool contributed by the co-metabolising microbes.

Independent Contributions: In contrast, the 'independent contributions' algorithm assumes the independent existence of microbes in the environment. Under this assumption, the effective abundance of a metabolic pathway is the sum total of the pathway abundances computed from individual microbes residing in that environment i.e the individual functional capacities of microbes independently contribute towards the effective presence or absence of a function