Current Challenges In Modeling Cellular Metabolism

Mathematical and computational models play an essential role in understanding the cellular metabolism. They are used as platforms to integrate current knowledge on a biological system and to systematically test and predict the effect of manipulations to such systems. The recent advances in genome sequencing techniques have facilitated the reconstruction of genome-scale metabolic networks for a wide variety of organisms from microbes to human cells. These models have been successfully used in multiple biotechnological applications. Despite these advancements, modeling cellular metabolism still presents many challenges. The aim of this Research Topic is not only to expose and consolidate the state-of-the-art in metabolic modeling approaches, but also to push this frontier beyond the current edge through the introduction of innovative solutions. The articles presented in this e-book address some of the main challenges in the field, including the integration of different modeling formalisms, the integration of heterogeneous data sources into metabolic models, explicit representation of other biological processes during phenotype simulation, and standardization efforts in the representation of metabolic models and simulation results.

Omics Technologies and Bio-Engineering: Towards Improving Quality of Life, Volume 2 is a unique reference that brings together multiple perspectives on omics research, providing in-depth analysis and insights from an international team of authors. The book delivers pivotal information that will inform and improve medical and biological research by helping readers gain more direct access to analytic data, an increased understanding on data evaluation, and a comprehensive picture on how to use omics data in molecular biology, biotechnology and human health care. Covers various aspects of biotechnology and bio-engineering using omics technologies Focuses on the latest developments in the field, including biofuel technologies Provides key insights into omics approaches in personalized and precision medicine Provides a complete picture on how one can utilize omics data in molecular biology, biotechnology and human health care

This book on modelling the electrical activity of the heart is an attempt to describe continuum based modelling of cardiac electrical activity from the cell level to the body surface (the forward problem), and back again (the inverse problem). Background anatomy and physiology is covered briefly to provide a suitable context for understanding the detailed modelling that is presented herein. The questions of what is mathematical modelling and why one would want to use mathematical modelling are addressed to give some perspective to the philosophy behind our approach. Our view of mathematical modelling is broad — it is not simply about obtaining a solution to a set of mathematical equations, but includes some material on aspects such as experimental and clinical validation.

Since the discovery of the Warburg effect in the 1920s cancer has been tightly associated with the genetic and metabolic state of the cell. One of the hallmarks of cancer is the alteration of the cellular metabolism in order to promote proliferation and undermine cellular defense mechanisms such as apoptosis or detection by the immune system. However, the strategies by which this is achieved in different cancers and sometimes even in different patients of the same cancer is very heterogeneous, which hinders the design of general treatment options. Recently, there has been an ongoing effort to study this phenomenon on a genomic scale in order to understand the causality underlying the disease. Hence, current “omics” technologies have contributed to identify and monitor different biological pieces at different biological levels, such as genes, proteins or metabolites. These technological capacities have provided us with vast amounts of clinical data where a single patient may often give rise to various tissue samples, each of them being characterized in detail by genomescale data on the sequence, expression, proteome and metabolome level. Data with such detail poses the imminent problem of extracting meaningful interpretations and translating them into specific treatment options. To this purpose, Systems Biology provides a set of promising computational tools in order to decipher the mechanisms driving a healthy cell’s metabolism into a cancerous one. However, this enterprise requires bridging the gap between large data resources, mathematical analysis and modeling specifically designed to work with the available data. This is by no means trivial and requires high levels of communication and adaptation between the experimental and theoretical side of research.

Creating some links between control feedback and biology modeling communities based on similarities in modeling, observing and perceiving alive structures, and analyzing interconnections between biological structures and subsystems was the main objective of this volume. In this context, biology systems need appropriate analysis tools due to their structure and hierarchy, complexity and environment interference, and we believe that these aspects may generate interesting research topics in control area. Indeed, several works, raising the potential impact of control developments to bring some beginning of answers in the context of biological systems, have been published in the recent years. The idea of this book was conceived in the context mentioned above with the objective to help in claiming many of the problems for control researchers, starting discussions and opening interactive debates between the control and biology communities, and, finally, to alert graduate students to the many interesting ideas at the frontier between control feedback theory and biology.

This book provides the latest research progress on genome editing in cardiovascular and metabolic diseases and includes bioinformatics research methodology of genome editing. Genome editing is a genetic engineering technique precisely modified specific target genes of organism genome, which has been applied to basic theoretical research and production applications from plants and animals to gene therapy of human beings. Cardiovascular and metabolic diseases have become major factors affecting human health worldwide. This book contains information about bioinformatics, genome editing in cardiovascular diseases, genome editing in metabolic diseases and therapeutic effects. It will be useful for biologist, cardiologist, cardiovascular surgeons, endocrinologist, internists, nurses, undergraduate and graduate students in medicine and cell biology and others interested in cardiovascular and metabolic medicine.