ABSTRACT: Over the last 25 years, several mathematical models of erythrocyte metabolism have been developed. Although these models have identified the key features in the regulation and control of erythrocyte metabolism, many important aspects remain unexplained. In particular, none of these models have satisfactorily accounted for 2,3-bisphosphoglycerate (2,3-BPG) metabolism. 2,3-BPG is an important modulator of haemoglobin oxygen affinity, and hence an understanding of the regulation of 2,3-BPG concentration is important for understanding blood oxygen transport. A detailed, comprehensive, and hence realistic mathematical model of erythrocyte metabolism is presented that can explain the regulation and control of 2,3-BPG concentration and turnover. The model is restricted to the core metabolic pathways, namely glycolysis, the 2,3-BPG shunt and the pentose phosphate pathway (PPP), and includes membrane transport of metabolites, the binding of metabolites to haemoglobin and Mg(2+), as well as pH effects on key enzymic reactions and binding processes. The model is necessarily complex, since it is intended to describe the regulation and control of 2,3-BPG metabolism under a wide variety of physiological and experimental conditions. In addition, since H(+) and blood oxygen tension are important external effectors of 2,3-BPG concentration, it was important that the model take into account the large array of kinetic and binding phenomena that result from changes in these effectors. Through an iterative loop of experimental and simulation analysis many values of enzyme-kinetic parameters of the model were refined to yield close conformity between model simulations and 'real' experimental data. This iterative process enabled a single set of parameters to be found which described well the metabolic behaviour of the erythrocyte under a wide variety of conditions.
