A Mathematical Approach to the Carbohydrate Catabolism in Ascaris lumbricoides

Metabolic pathways within a biological cell serve as a key for the various functions of the living organism. In this article, the authors have considered a mathematical study of the carbohydrate catabolism of the nematode, Ascaris lumbricoides. The technique involves setting up of a Stoichiometric matrix (S) for the biochemical reactions involved in the process and calculating biochemically meaningful basis vectors for the null space of S. In the present study, the stoichiometric matrix S is of order 26×40 for which fourteen column vectors are obtained as forming the "basis". It is found that twelve column vectors represent the reversible reactions involved in the metabolic pathway and two-column vectors represents stoichiometry of the network.