Bar Nadav S, Radde Nicole
Department of Chemical Engineering, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, NO-7491, Trondheim, Norway.
BMC Syst Biol. 2009 Nov 10;3:107. doi: 10.1186/1752-0509-3-107.
Feed composition has a large impact on the growth of animals, particularly marine fish. We have developed a quantitative dynamic model that can predict the growth and body composition of marine fish for a given feed composition over a timespan of several months. The model takes into consideration the effects of environmental factors, particularly temperature, on growth, and it incorporates detailed kinetics describing the main metabolic processes (protein, lipid, and central metabolism) known to play major roles in growth and body composition.
For validation, we compared our model's predictions with the results of several experimental studies. We showed that the model gives reliable predictions of growth, nutrient utilization (including amino acid retention), and body composition over a timespan of several months, longer than most of the previously developed predictive models.
We demonstrate that, despite the difficulties involved, multiscale models in biology can yield reasonable and useful results. The model predictions are reliable over several timescales and in the presence of strong temperature fluctuations, which are crucial factors for modeling marine organism growth. The model provides important improvements over existing models.
饲料组成对动物生长有很大影响，尤其是对海水鱼类。我们开发了一个定量动态模型，该模型可以预测在几个月的时间跨度内，给定饲料组成条件下海水鱼类的生长和身体组成。该模型考虑了环境因素，特别是温度对生长的影响，并纳入了详细的动力学过程，以描述已知在生长和身体组成中起主要作用的主要代谢过程（蛋白质、脂质和中心代谢）。
为了进行验证，我们将模型的预测结果与多项实验研究的结果进行了比较。我们发现，该模型能够在数月的时间跨度内对生长、营养物质利用（包括氨基酸保留）和身体组成给出可靠的预测，这比大多数先前开发的预测模型的时间跨度更长。
我们证明，尽管存在困难，但生物学中的多尺度模型仍可产生合理且有用的结果。该模型的预测在多个时间尺度上以及存在强烈温度波动的情况下都是可靠的，而温度波动是模拟海洋生物生长的关键因素。该模型在现有模型的基础上有重要改进。
