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Chapter category: Bioinformatics
The Predictive Power of Molecular Network Modelling: Case Studies of Predictions with Subsequent Experimental Verification
Chapter authors:
Stefan Schuster*, Edda Klipp and Marko Marhl
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Since the 1960s, the mathematical modelling of intracellular systems, such as metabolic
pathways, signal transduction cascades and transport processes, is an ever-increasing field
of research. The results of most modelling studies in this field are in good qualitative or
even quantitative agreement with experimental results. However, a widely held view among
many experimentalists is that modelling and simulation only reproduce what has been known
before from experiment. A true justification of theoretical biology would arise if theoreticians
could predict something unknown, which would later be found experimentally. Theoretical
physics has achieved this justification by making many right predictions, for example, on the
existence of positrons. Here, we review three cases where experimental groups that were independent
of the theoreticians who had made the predictions confirmed theoretical predictions
on features of intracellular biological systems later. The three cases concern the optimal time
course of gene expression in metabolic pathways, the operation of a metabolic route involving
part of the tricarboxylic acid cycle and glyoxylate shunt, and the decoding of calcium oscillations
by calcium-dependent protein kinases.
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