2024/05/17 by Kamila Barylska, Barylska, Kamila, Anna Gogolińska +1
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Engineering · #68 #Advanced Control Systems Optimization #Computation and Language (cs.CL) #F.1.1 #FOS: Biological sciences #FOS: Computer and information sciences #Gene Regulatory Network Analysis #Other Quantitative Biology (q-bio.OT)
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2405.11009
openalex publication_date 2024/05/17 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Diabetes is a chronic condition, considered one of the civilization diseases, that is characterized by sustained high blood sugar levels. There is no doubt that more and more people is going to suffer from diabetes, hence it is crucial to understand better its biological foundations. The essential processes related to the control of glucose levels in the blood are: glycolysis (process of breaking down of glucose) and glucose synthesis, both taking place in the liver. The glycolysis occurs during feeding and it is stimulated by insulin. On the other hand, the glucose synthesis arises during fasting and it is stimulated by glucagon. In the paper we present a Petri net model of glycolysis and glucose synthesis in the liver. The model is created based on medical literature. Standard Petri nets techniques are used to analyse the properties of the model: traps, reachability graphs, tokens dynamics, deadlocks analysis. The results are described in the paper. Our analysis shows that the model captures the interactions between different enzymes and substances, which is consistent with the biological processes occurring during fasting and feeding. The model constitutes the first element of our long-time goal to create the whole body model of the glucose regulation in a healthy human and a person with diabetes.