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This study presents a differential equation model for the feedback mechanisms between Gonadotropin-releasing Hormone (GnRH), Follicle-Stimulating Hormone (FSH), Luteinizing Hormone (LH), development of follicles and corpus luteum, and the production of estradiol (E2), progesterone (P4), inhibin A (IhA), and inhibin B (IhB) during the female menstrual cycle.
In contrast to other models, this model does not involve delay differential equations and is based on deterministic modelling of the GnRH pulse pattern, which allows for faster simulation times and efficient parameter identification.
These steps were essential to tackle the task of developing a mathematical model for the administration of GnRH analogues.
The focus of this paper is on model development for GnRH receptor binding and the integration of a pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic model for the GnRH agonist Nafarelin and the GnRH antagonist Cetrorelix into the menstrual cycle model.
The final mathematical model describes the hormone profiles (LH, FSH, P4, E2) throughout the menstrual cycle in 12 healthy women.
Moreover, it correctly predicts the changes in the cycle following single and multiple dose administration of Nafarelin or Cetrorelix at different stages in the cycle.
Our model of the bovine estrous cycle is a set of ordinary differential equations which generates hormone profiles of successive estrous cycles with several follicular waves per cycle. It describes the growth and decay of the follicles and the corpus luteum, as well as the change of the key substances over time. In this work we describe recent improvements of this model, including the introduction of new components, and elimination of time delays. We validate our model by showing that the simulations agree with observations from synchronization studies and with measured progesterone data after a single dose administration of synthetic prostaglandin F2alpha.
In a number of studies the feeding of pharmacological levels of Zinc to weanling pigs was examined. The publications agree in the fact that the achieved performance increase of the pigs depends on the amount of Zinc as well as on the type of mineral complex used as feed additive. The results are based on measurements of the animals' body weight and the Zinc concentration in the blood within the first two weeks of the experiments. From the measurement values, conclusions are drawn about adequate Zinc doses, but a deeper understanding of the physiological processes that influence the Zinc distribution in the organism is still missing. In this report, we want to close this gap by using a systems biology approach. We present a small mathematical model that describes the organic feedback mechanisms with the help of differential equations. The simulation results not only match with measurement values, but also give insight into non-measurable processes, which will hopefully contribute to animal experiments being organized in a more selective and reduced way.
Modelling, parameter identification, and simulation play an important rôle in Systems Biology. In recent years, various software packages have been established for scientific use in both licencing types, open source as well as commercial. Many of these codes are based on inefficient and mathematically outdated algorithms. By introducing the package BioPARKIN recently developed at ZIB, we want to improve this situation significantly. The development of the software BioPARKIN involves long standing mathematical ideas that, however, have not yet entered the field of Systems Biology, as well as new ideas and tools that are particularly important for the analysis of the dynamics of biological networks. BioPARKIN originates from the package PARKIN, written by P.Deuflhard and U.Nowak, that has been applied successfully for parameter identification in physical chemistry for many years.
Particle methods have become indispensible in conformation dynamics to
compute transition rates in protein folding, binding processes and
molecular design, to mention a few.
Conformation dynamics requires at a decomposition of a molecule's position
space into metastable conformations.
In this paper, we show how this decomposition
can be obtained via the design of either ``soft'' or ``hard''
molecular conformations.
We show, that the soft approach results in a larger metastabilitiy of
the decomposition and is thus more advantegous. This is illustrated
by a simulation of Alanine Dipeptide.