Metabolic simulation

The computer simulation is one of the essential means to investigate dynamic and steady-state behavior as well as control of metabolic pathways. A metabolic simulator is a computer program that performs one or several of the tasks including solving the steady state of a metabolic pathway, dynamically simulating a metabolic pathway, or calculating the control coefficient of a metabolic pathway. Its mathematical model generally consists of a set of differential equations derived from rate equations of the enzymatic reactions of the pathway. 

Search the Internet for kinetic parameters of jS-fructosidase and a-galactosidase. Perform metabolic simulation to compare the effectiveness of the two reaction sequences to produce D-glucose. 

Perform metabolic simulation for ethanol metabolism using kinetic parameters from Exercise 7 of Chapter 7, assuming ethanol and NAD+ concentrations of 10 mM and 1.0 mM, respectively. 

Perform metabolic simulation to compare preferred pathways under different experimental conditions ... 

Mekenyan, O., Jones, W. J., Kolanczyk, R. C., and Schmieder, P. K. (2007). Design and performance of a xenobiotic metabohsm database manager for metabolic simulator enhancement and chemical risk analysis. In SEIAC Europe 17th Annual Meeting, Porto, Patugal. 

For both toxicology prediction and xenobiotic metabolism simulation, expert systems will need to draw increasingly on improving quantitative methods (in well understood model space) to refine and improve the predictions that they make. Qualitative and quantitative methods are complementary and should not be used in consensus approaches. A future in which both sit side by side in comfortable co-existence, gaining wide usage and acceptance, is highly desirable, and indeed perhaps essential. 

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