RESEARCH The Stochastic Human Red Blood Cell Model and Its Applications Archita Biswas1, Pawan K Dhar1, Girja Kaushal2, Usha Kumari3, Kalaiarasan Ponnusamy* 1Synthetic Biology group, School of Biotechnology, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India 2Center of Innovative and Applied Bioprocessing, Mohali, Punjab, India 3Faculty of Medicine, AIMST University, Malaysia. *Corresponding author’s email:
[email protected] ABSTRACT Red blood cells (RBCs) form the bulk of the blood volume for delivering oxygen and nutrients to various cells in the body. Several studies have focused on the RBCs to understand its metabolic activities in normal and abnormal conditions. However, an integrated view of the red blood cell, as a system of molecular fluctuations, is still lacking. The RBC metabolic wiring comprises four key pathways, i.e. Glycolysis, Pentose Phosphate, Purine salvage pathway and Glutathione pathway. Here we present an integrated metabolic pathway model of the human red blood cell by including first three pathways due to their significant presence and interaction. Furthermore, the stochastic model of RBCs metabolic pathways has been extended to include explaining abnormal conditions in the form of Pyruvate Kinase and Aldolase A deficiencies. By studying metabolite changes in-silico, four biomarkers were found to represent two genetic mutations, i.e., 2-phosphoglycerate & phosphoenol pyruvate changes for Pyruvate kinase deficiency and fructose-1-6-bisphosphate & xylulose-5-phosphate for Aldolase A deficiency. The virtual RBC model has the potential for more clinical applications and can be scaled up to include additional regulatory and metabolic content. KEYWORDS: Virtual Cell, stochastic model, RBC, ns, Pyruvate kinase, Aldolase A deficiency. Citation: Biswas A et al (2018) The Stochastic human red blood cell model and its applications.