A Structured and Multi-cellular Model of Starch Biosynthesis in Potato

Recently, systems biology has been increasingly applied to gain insights into the complexity of living organisms. Many inaccessible biological information and hidden evidences fur example flux distribution of the metabolites are simply revealed by investigation of artificial cell behaviors. Most bio-models are models of single cell organisms that cannot handle the multi-cellular organisms like plants. Herein, a structured and multi-cellular model of potato was developed to comprehend the root starch biosynthesis. On the basis of simplest plant cell biology, a potato structured model on the platform of Berkley Madonna was divided into three parts: photosynthetic (leaf), non-photosynthetic (tuber) and transportation (phloem) cells. The model of starch biosynthesis begins with the fixation of CO$_2$ from atmosphere to the Calvin cycle. Passing through a series of reactions, triose phosphate from Calvin cycle is converted to sucrose which is transported to sink cells and is eventually formed the amylose and amylopectin (starch constituents). After validating the model with data from a number of literatures, the results show that the structured model is a good representative of the studied system. The result of triose phosphate (DHAP and GAP) elevation due to lessening the aldolase activity is an illustration of the validation. Furthermore, the representative model was used to gain more understanding of starch production process such as the effect of CO$_2$ uptake on qualitative and quantitative aspects of starch biosynthesis.