Team:JNFLS/Model

Our Model

We generally realized that, along with the increasing development of synthetic biology, a well-established model ought to be derived from the experiment and used in the experiment, which means to make assumption according to the data, and then use the principle we have learned (chemistry, biology, etc.) to establish a model that is able to reflect the essence of the phenomenon and add accuracy to the result; this is the principle and the reason for our modeling.

We wanted to understand the effects of different concentrations of HCVC7 aptamer on the result of HCVC protein detection in our system, and we hoped that the inspirational result will help our experiment and contribute to the further application of our system in the real world.

To achieve this goal, we decided to employ Hill equation to establish our model. Hill equation is commonly used to study the kinetics of reactions that exhibit a sigmoidal behavior in synthetic biology. The rate of many processes, such as the binding process of HCVC7 aptamer and HCVC protein in our system, can be analyzed by the Hill equation.

The common form of Hill equation is shown below:

And the adjusted form, based on the condition of our system, can be shown below:

R: The velocity of the binding process of HCVC7 aptamer and HCVC protein.

V_max: The maximum velocity of the reaction. It has the same units as the reaction velocity (R).

[K_aptamer]: The concentration of HCVC7 aptamer.

C_(1/2 aptamer): The half-maximal concentration constant; it is the concentration of HCVC7 aptamer that gives rise to a reaction velocity that is 50% of V_max.

n: The Hill coefficient, which provides a measure of the cooperativity of HCVC7 aptamer binding to the HCVC protein.

Model of HCVC7 aptamer and HCVC protein binding