Nev, Olga (2017) Regulation of nutrient uptake, substrate conversion, and bio-production in micro-organisms. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

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Abstract

This thesis presents the development and analysis of a macro-chemical kinetics model of microbial metabolism and growth, belonging to the class of Variable-Internal-Stores (VIS) models. Such models can account for changes in the internal state of a micro-organism in response to variations in environmental conditions. In addition to VIS, the model developed in the present thesis describes the adaptive allocation of molecular building blocks among various types of catalytic machinery by means of so-called ‘regulatory rules’ which can be reconstructed from observational data, as shown in Chapter 4. In Chapter 2 I show that this novel VIS-with-reallocation model has a unique, stable equilibrium point and reduces to classical models of microbial growth and metabolism. In Chapter 3 this mathematical model is treated as a piecewise smooth system, which allows me to investigate the behaviour of the model under conditions of starvation, and, in particular, to describe this behaviour in terms of Fillipov sliding modes. In Chapter 4, I study the response of the model to time-varying environmental conditions of the ‘feast-or-famine’ type of nutrient limitation, where I address the question of maximally adaptive regulation of reserve densities and show that optimal reserve management is governed by the frequency of environmental fluctuations on time scale comparable to that of the organism’s physiology.

Item Type:	Thesis or Dissertation (PhD)
Subjects:	Q Science > QR Microbiology
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Microbial metabolism -- Mathematical models, Microbial growth -- Mathematical models, Chemical kinetics, Genetic regulation -- Mathematical models
Official Date:	May 2017
Dates:	Date Event May 2017 Submitted
Institution:	University of Warwick
Theses Department:	Molecular Organisation and Assembly in Cells
Thesis Type:	PhD
Publication Status:	Unpublished
Supervisor(s)/Advisor:	Berg, Hugo van den, 1968-
Sponsors:	Seventh Framework Programme (European Commission)
Format of File:	pdf
Extent:	viii, 137 leaves : illustrations, charts
Language:	eng

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