Team:Imperial College London/Modelling/Output/Detailed Description

Objectives; Detailed Description; Parameters & Constants; Results & Conclusion;Download MatLab Files;

Detailed Description

1. Model based on Law of Mass Action

During a meeting with our advisors, it was noted that our initial models (which had assumed that our system obeyed Michaelis Menten kinetics) were wrong. This is due to the fact that Michaelis Menten kinetics does not apply to our system.

Click here to learn more about our models based on Michaelis Menten kinetics.

In order to be able to use Michaelis Menten kinetics, there a lot of assumptions that have to be made. A few of these assumptions were not met by our system:

• Vmax is proportional to the overall concentration of the enzyme.

Since we are continuously producing enzyme, Vmax will change. Therefore the conservation E₀ = E + E_S does not hold for our system.

• Substrate >> Enzyme

We are producing both substrate and enzyme, so we have approximately the same amount of substrate and enzyme.

• Enzyme affinity to the substrate has to be high.

Therefore, the model above is not representative of the enzymatic reaction. As we cannot use the Michaelis-Menten model we will have to solve from first principle (which involves writing down all of the biochemical equations and solving for these in Matlab).

Change of output

During our literature research, we came across a better output, so we abandoned the idea of using GFP as an output. Instead, we are using catechol. An enzyme, dioxygenase, will be acting on the catechol, which will then result in a coloured output. Catechol will be added to the bacteria manually (i.e. the bacteria will not produce catechol). Hence, in our models dioxygenase will be treated as an output as this enzyme is the only activator of catechol in our system. This means that the change of catechol into its colourful form is dependent on the dioxygenase concentration.

2. Model preA: Simple production of dioxygenase

Transcription and translation (simple production) of dioxygenase

This model includes transcription and translation of the dioxygenase. It does not involve any amplification steps. It is our control model against which we will be comparing the results of other models.

3. Model A: Activation of Dioxygenase by TEV enzyme

1-step amplification

This model consists of the basic enzymatic reaction:

This is a simple enzymatic reaction, where TEV is the enzyme, Dioxygenase the product and split Dioxygenase the substrate. Choosing k₁, k₂, k₃ as reaction constants, the reaction can be rewritten in these four sub-equations:

These four equations were implemented in Matlab, using a built-in function (ode45) which solves ordinary differential equations.

Implementation in TinkerCell

Another approach to model the amplification module would be to implement it in a program such as TinkerCell (or CellDesigner). This would be useful to check whether the Matlab model works.

Model A implemented in TinkerCell

4. Model B: Activation of Dioxygenase by TEV or activated split TEV enzyme

2-step amplification

This version includes the following features:

• 2 amplification steps (TEV and split TEV)
• Split TEV is specified to have a and b parts
• TEVa is forbidden to interact with TEVa (though in reality there could be some affinity between the two). Same for the interaction between Tevb and Tevb
• Both TEV and TEVs are allowed to activate dioxygenase
• Dioxygenase is assumed to be active as a monomer
• Activate split TEV (TEVs) is not allowed to activate sTEVa or sTEVb (this kind of interaction is accounted for in the next model version)
• This model does not include any specific terms for time delays

5. Model C: Further improvements

This model has not been implemented because of the conclusions that we reached from Models A and B. It would include the following features:

• activated split TEV (TEVs) is allowed to activate not only sD but sTEVa and sTEVb