Metabolism of totally ischemic excised dog heart. I. Construction of a computer model.

Construction and fit to the experimental data of a computer model of glycolysis, the Krebs cycle, and related metabolism in an ischemic dog heart preparation, involving 122 metabolites, 65 enzymes, and 406 chemical reactions, is described. The experimental preparation simulated is a dog heart excised from the body, placed in a beaker of Tyrode's solution, and sampled for 100 min; the model required only moderate modification from models representing perfused rat hearts, and little modification from a model of another ischemic dog heart preparation. Common underlying mechanisms for the ischemia are indicated, although this preparation appears to evolve more slowly with time, perhpas owing to heavy sedation and diffusion-limited transport. Lactate is, at first, exported and then accumulates intracellularly; pH falls, but not as much in the mitochondria as the cytoplasm; redox couples go reduced, but with counterintuitive time courses; calcium phosphate is calculated to precipitate, as often observed in cardiac ischemia.