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Team:SydneyUni Australia/Modelling Intro
From 2013.igem.org
Introduction
So why bother with modelling? Generally, a model of a natural/physical system allows humans to probe the inner workings of that system. They are used to quantitatively and/or qualititatively understand the mechanisms by which the system exists. Mathematics is a language which connects the human brain to the world in which it exists in. A model is the screen which translates nature's languange into one which we can interprate and try to begin to understand. By designing a model based on truths, we try to learn what nature has to say. Modelling is story-telling. Mathematicians and poets both try to condeense experience into simple, beautiful truths.
A pharmacokinetic model was constructed in order to determine the intracellular concentration of the metabolites as a function of time and determine the rate at which DCA is removed from solution. The synthetic metabolic pathway involves four introduced enzymes which converts the substrate 1,2-dichloroethane (DCA) into the end product glycolate through 3 metabolic intermediates. The concentration of each metabolic species over time was modelled through a system of ordinary differential equations (ODE) where Michaelis-Menton (MM) equations were used to model the kinetics of each enzyme of our constructed metabolic pathway.
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