Predicting growth and finding biomass production using the general growth mechanism

Abstract

First, we briefly describe the general growth mechanism, which governs the growth of living organisms, and its mathematical representation, the growth equation. Using the growth equation, we compute growth curve for S. cerevisiae and show that it corresponds to available experimental data. Then, we propose a new method for finding amount of synthesized biomass without complicated stoichiometric computations and apply this method to evaluation of biomass production by S. cerevisiae. We found that obtained results are very close to values obtained by methods of metabolic flux analysis. Since methods of metabolic flux analysis require finding produced biomass, which is one of the most important parameters affecting stoichiometric models, a priori knowledge of produced biomass can significantly improve methods of metabolic flux analysis in many aspects, which we also discuss. Besides, based on the general growth mechanism, we considered evolutionary development of S. cerevisiae and found that it is a more ancient organism than S. pombe and is apparently its direct predecessor.