Simplest way to load a xls file as a model for COBRA

[RaviM]

Dear All

After draft reconstruction is done for achieving a genome-scale model in excel sheet,
how should one load it into Matlab for analyzing via COBRA.

I have seen xls2model code for COBRA, and tried loading the ecoli_core_model.xls into MATLAB.
But strangely when I look at the spy(model.S) it doesn't look like that of ecoli_core_model.xml
Obviously the coefficients have been disturbed due to mets and rxns assignment.

Secondly i have seen the rBioNet tool, this again when upload the example 'mat' file i run into problems.
Why again i need to convert the excel into txt files separately for rBioNet.

Is there any simplest way to upload a draft model as a xls file into COBRA. To perform any kind of analysis,
one needs the stoichiometric matrix and GPRs uploaded. and this critical step is turning out to be complex to me.

Hope to see some help
Regards
Ravi

[RaviM]

After doing the flux analysis, i figured out that

ecoli_core_model.xls uploaded via xls2model &
ecoli_core_model.xml uploaded via readCbModel
results in same flux distribution for given set of inputs.

Initially i thought xls2model wasn't working as the spy(model.S) gave different result in comparison to xml model.
Actually the metabolites sequences were different in both cases, so is the difference, but that wouldn't affect model analysis.

Secondly, i have no knowledge on sbml or xml file generation.
Can somebody give me leads to convert xls model file to xml file like that of ecoli_core_model.

Thanks in advance