Related papers: Method for finding metabolic properties based on t…
Understanding biological phenomena requires a systemic approach that incorporates different mechanisms acting on different spatial and temporal scales, since in organisms the workings of all components, such as organelles, cells, and organs…
Metabolism and evolution are closely connected: if a mutation incurs extra energetic costs for an organism, there is a baseline selective disadvantage that may or may not be compensated for by other adaptive effects. A long-standing, but to…
Production of energy (metabolism) and its distribution is vital for living organisms, both at individual level - between different functions of an organism, as well as between species of communities at different organizational levels,…
Living systems continuously transform matter and energy through the chemical processes that constitute their metabolism. The overall metabolic rate of an organism correlates positively with its body mass, however both the exact scaling…
High-throughput experimental techniques and bioinformatics tools make it possible to obtain reconstructions of the metabolism of microbial species. Combined with mathematical frameworks such as flux balance analysis, which assumes that…
Accurately determining and classifying the structure of complex networks is the focus of much current research. One class of network of particular interest are metabolic pathways, which have previously been studied from a graph theoretical…
Physiological whole-body models are valuable tools for the development of novel drugs where understanding the system aspects is important. This paper presents a generalized model that encapsulates the structure and flow of whole-body human…
Allometric scaling is one of the most pervasive laws in biology. Its origin, however, is still a matter of dispute. Recent studies have established that maximum metabolic rate scales with an exponent larger than that found for basal…
One of the major characteristics of living organisms is metabolic rate, which is the amount of energy produced per unit of time. When the mass of organisms increases, the metabolic rate also increases (usually as a power function of mass),…
The origin of allometric scaling of metabolic rate is a long-standing question in biology. Several models have been proposed for explaining the origin; however, they have advantages and disadvantages. In particular, previous models only…
Metabolic networks consist of linked functional components, or modules. The mechanism underlying metabolic network modularity is of great interest not only to researchers of basic science but also to those in fields of engineering. Previous…
Understanding design principles of complex cellular organization is one of the major challenges in biology. Recent analysis of the large-scale cellular organization has revealed the scale-free nature and robustness of metabolic and protein…
We present significantly advanced studies of the previously introduced physical growth mechanism and unite it with biochemical growth factors. Obtained results allowed formulating the general growth law which governs growth and evolutional…
This paper investigates the role of size in biological organisms. More specifically, how the energy demand, expressed by the metabolic rate, changes according to the mass of an organism. Empirical evidence suggests a power-law relation…
Recently, West et al. claimed to derive a general quantitative model based on fundamental principles for the allocation of metabolic energy between maintenance of existing tissue and the production of new biomass, and in addition claimed to…
We propose a whole-body model of the metabolism in man as well as a generalized approach for modeling metabolic networks. Using this approach, we are able to write a large metabolic network in a systematic and compact way. We demonstrate…
Metagenomics has lowered the barrier to microbial discovery--enabling the identification of novel microbes without isolation--but cultures remain imperative for the deep study of microbes. Cultivation and isolation of non-model microbes…
The present view of biological phenomena is based on a biochemical paradigm that development of living organisms is defined by information stored in a molecular form as some genetic code. However, new discoveries indicate that biological…
Most physical and other natural systems are complex entities composed of a large number of interacting individual elements. It is a surprising fact that they often obey the so-called scaling laws relating an observable quantity with a…
The metabolic activity of microbes has played an essential role in the evolution and persistence of life on Earth. Microbial metabolism plays a primary role in the flow of carbon, nitrogen and other elements through the biosphere on a…