Biological and physical realizations of abstract metabolic models

Abstract

1. The application of general models to individual biological systems requires us to be able to pass from the abstract model to individual elements of the class of realizations of the model. 2. In order to do this, it is necessary to supplement the model by a variety of constraints. 3. It is argued that two kinds of constraints are sufficient for this purpose: (a) a constraint specifying a particular physical embodiment of some subsystem of the formal model, and (b) a constraint specifying the optimality of the total system with respect to a suitably chosen criterion of cost. 4. The employment of analogous systems, or simulation, to obtain structural information about a particular realization is briefly discussed. © 1966 Biologischen Anstalt Helgoland.