ASSESSING THE MAIN REACTIONS IN A BIOPROCESS: APPLICATION TO CHEESE RIPENING

The aim of this paper is to select the main reactions of a bioprocess from a set of plausible metabolic pathways provided by expert knowledge. We use a methodology aiming at determining the pseudo-stoichiometric coefficient matrix of a macroscopic mass balance based model. First, the size of the system is identified and a subspace where the bioprocess dynamics lives is established. In a second step, the set of a priori plausible reactions is compared with the identified subspace and the most adequate reactions are selected. This approach is applied to cheese ripening experimental data. As the main result the method leads to the identification of a metabolic network that can be the base for dynamical model development.