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Towards the development of a minimal cell model by generalization of a model of Escherichia coli: Use of dimensionless rate parameters
Author(s) -
Browning Samuel T.,
Shuler Michael L.
Publication year - 2001
Publication title -
biotechnology and bioengineering
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.136
H-Index - 189
eISSN - 1097-0290
pISSN - 0006-3592
DOI - 10.1002/bit.10007
Subject(s) - generalization , dimensionless quantity , scaling , escherichia coli , function (biology) , range (aeronautics) , biological system , chemistry , mathematics , biology , biochemistry , thermodynamics , genetics , physics , materials science , mathematical analysis , geometry , gene , composite material
A model of a minimal cell would be a valuable tool in identifying the organizing principles that relate the static sequence information of the genome to the dynamic functioning of the living cell. Our approach for developing a minimal cell model is to first generalize an existing model of Escherichia coli by expressing reaction rates as ratios to a set of reference parameters. This generalized model is a prototype minimal cell model that will be developed by adding detail to explicitly include each chemical species. We tested the concept of a generalized model by testing the effect of scaling all enzyme‐catalyzed reactions in the E. coli model. The scaling has little effect on cellular function for a wide range of kinetic ratios, where the kinetic ratio is defined as the rate of all enzyme‐catalyzed reactions in a given model relative to those in the E. coli model. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Biotechnol Bioeng 76: 187–192, 2001.