Method for finding metabolic properties based on the general growth law. Liver examples. A General framework for biological modeling

Abstract

We propose a method for finding metabolic parameters of cells, organs and whole organisms, which is based on the earlier discovered general growth law. Based on the obtained results and analysis of available biological models, we propose a general framework for modeling biological phenomena and discuss how it can be used in Virtual Liver Network project. The foundational idea of the study is that growth of cells, organs, systems and whole organisms, besides biomolecular machinery, is influenced by biophysical mechanisms acting at different scale levels. In particular, the general growth law uniquely defines distribution of nutritional resources between maintenance needs and biomass synthesis at each phase of growth and at each scale level. We exemplify the approach considering metabolic properties of growing human and dog livers and liver transplants. A procedure for verification of obtained results has been introduced too. We found that two examined dogs have high metabolic rates consuming about 0.62 and 1 gram of nutrients per cubic centimeter of liver per day, and verified this using the proposed verification procedure. We also evaluated consumption rate of nutrients in human livers, determining it to be about 0.088 gram of nutrients per cubic centimeter of liver per day for males, and about 0.098 for females. This noticeable difference can be explained by evolutionary development, which required females to have greater liver processing capacity to support pregnancy. We also found how much nutrients go to biomass synthesis and maintenance at each phase of liver and liver transplant growth. Obtained results demonstrate that the proposed approach can be used for finding metabolic characteristics of cells, organs, and whole organisms, which can further serve as important inputs for many applications in biology (protein expression), biotechnology (synthesis of substances), and medicine.

20 pages, 6 figures, 4 tables

References in corpus (5)

• A Computational Model of Liver Iron Metabolism
• Polarization Invariants and Retrieval of Surface Parameters Using Polarization Measurements in Remote Sensing Applications
• General law of growth and replication. Growth equation and its applications
• Predicting growth and finding biomass production using the general growth mechanism
• Distributed Parametric Effect in Long Lines and its Applications

Cited by in corpus (3)

• Interspecific allometric scaling of unicellular organisms as an evolutionary process of food chain creation
• Why cells grow and divide? General growth mechanism and how it defines cells' growth, reproduction and metabolic properties
• Physical mechanisms influencing life origin and development. Physical-biochemical paradigm of Life