Network Analysis of the Kinetics of Amino Acid Metabolism in a Liver Cell Bioreactor

The correlation of the kinetics of 18 amino acids, ammonia and urea in 18 liver cell bioreactor runs was analyzed and described by network structures. Three kinds of networks were investigated: i) correlation networks, ii) Bayesian networks, and iii) dynamic networks that obtain their structure from systems of differential equations. Three groups of liver cell bioreactor runs with low, medium and high performance, respectively, were investigated. The aim of this study was to identify patterns and structures of the amino acid metabolism that can characterize different performance levels of the bioreactor.