Modeling of Metabolic Pathways Using Petri Net

Plasmodium falciparum which is one of the four species that causes malaria has been found to be the deadliest in Africa. Over the years, attempts have been made to find a way of eradicating this disease thereby reducing the casualties as a result of the disease. Computational models such as Boolean networks, Graph theory have been used to simulate and model real life systems as well as biological systems as a method of identifying the way the systems behave in different situations. But, the petri net model which is also a computational model developed by Carl Adams Petri would be used in this project, this is due to its ability to model inconsistency that has been found to be in existence in most real life systems. In this study, the Petri net model constructed with the PNML (Petri Net Markup Language) based on the stoichiometric matrix is used to represent the TCA cycle (TCA cycle data obtained from Biocyc database) a system that is involved in producing energy for the Plasmodium falciparum parasite, it is also one that has been found to be at the heart of all the energy developing processes. The constructed model is then used to identify choke points (essential reactions) that could be altered and used as a way to cause the death of the parasite due to the lack of energy production.