Estimating metabolic pathways parameters using distributed Monte Carlo method

Abstract

Metabolic pathways can be represented as a huge set of differential equations with a large number of parameters. The solution of this system is not trivial because of the problem size and because of the limited information on model parameters. Most of the parameters cannot be calculated directly or obtained as direct experimental results. The only way is to estimate models parameters in such way that result of model approximate available experimental data. In this paper we present method of estimation of the parameters based on distributed computing using Monte Carlo method. This method has been applied to the tricarboxylic acid cycle [1] and compared with the existing model. © 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.