Lecture 2: Systems Biology of Yeast Metabolism: Modeling
Metabolism is highly complex and involves thousands of different connected reactions; it is therefore necessary to use mathematical models for holistic studies, the use of mathematical models in biology is often considered a core definition of systems biology. The principles of systems biology are described, and two different types of mathematical models used for studying metabolism are discussed: kinetic models and genome-scale metabolic models. Recent advances on genome-scale metabolic modeling will be discussed, and it will be demonstrated how incorporating of kinetic data and proteome constraints can improve the predictive strengths of these models. It will also be shown how further expanding these models to include description of protein synthesis and protein translocation allows for gaining further insight into the constraints that control cellular growth and metabolism.