Team:Sydney Australia/Model

The aim of modelling in synthetic biology is to simulate the behaviour of your project to gain insight into how to best improve it. For our project, we saw three levels at which modelling could aid in the pursuit of its central aims.

As has been explored on our integrated human practices and applied design pages, the problem of insulin accessibility is complex and multi-faceted. As such, we decided it was not enough to consider our project as a problem whose solution could be found solely in a test tube. Distilled down, our project can be viewed as three sequential aims which we believe together can be used to address insulin accessibility.

Our modelling efforts were split into three branches, which reflected these major aspects of our project

Difficulties optimising production of recombinant are a key issue in the state of its accessibility. in silico experiments to simulate how best to optimise expression led to theoretical insights which informed the direction of our efforts.

It is imperative to test the feasibility of our recombinant insulin as a therapeautic for diabetics. Modelling the effects of changes to insulin’s biochemical makeup on its therapeutic effects supplement our wet-lab efforts to characterise our molecule

In addition, the project would be moot without a consideration of the insulin market as a whole. Modelling helped us to gain insight into the global insulin market, which informed our approach towards entrepeneurship.

Experimental

Physiological

Economic

Symbol	Meaning
\[s_i\]	Internal Nutrient
\[a\]	energy, such as ATP
\[r\]	Ribosomes
\[e_t\]	A Transporter enzyme
\[e_m\]	A Metabolic Enzyme
\[q\]	House-keeping proteins
\[m_x \textrm{ with } x\in\{r,t,m,q\}\]	free mRNAs of the four species of proteins
\[c_x\textrm{ with } x\in\{r,t,m,q\}\]	ribosome-bound mRNA of the four species of proteins