1. Prerequisites#

Certain topics and concepts are assumed to be familiar by the reader or are only given a cursory introduction for the introductory and intermediate sections. These include:

1.1. Kinetics#

  • Basic Chemical Kinetics: Difference between rates of change, reaction rates. Mass-action kinetics, the equilibrium constant.

  • Basic Enzyme Kinetics: Irreversible and reversible Michaelis-Menten kinetics for single substrate, single product reactions. Product inhibition, competitive and uncompetitive inhibition.

  • Cooperativity, allostery, and the Hill equation.

1.2. Biology#

  • Knowledge of metabolic pathways, the role of enzymes in metabolic pathways, knowledge of allosteric control. Some knowledge of protein signaling networks for more advanced topics.

  • Stoichiometric networks, mass-balance equations to formulate metabolic models as differential equations.

  • Concept of the steady state, concentrations and fluxes, boundary and floating species.

1.3. Mathematics#

  • Elementary differential calculus, understanding partial derivatives and differential equations, logarithms.

  • For the advanced section some knowledge of matrices and vectors, matrix addition, multiplication and matrix inversion, knowledge of eigenvalues.