Role of modeling in the design of experiments in carbohydrate metabolism

Most publications on modeling present only the final product without describing the details as to how they were developed and tested. It is, however, by model development and testing that the true power of modeling as a research tool reveals itself. The purpose of this paper is to present a "behind the scenes" look at a set of experiments designed to study carbon atom transport in gluconeogenesis. In particular, it will be shown how the development of one model led to hypotheses for which another set of experiments was designed. The model which resulted from the second study contained in turn a number of new hypotheses for which further experiments remain to be designed. The second model supported the findings of the first, and yielded deeper insights into the exchange of carbon atoms among three metabolites. It is hoped this illustration will encourage other investigators to take advantage of the utilitarian value of modeling not only as a parameter generating tool, but also as a true research tool which can aid significantly to extract more information from available data.