Math Modeling to Analyze the Health of the Gut Microbiome

Abstract

Understanding the gut microbiome and its link to human health is an important and marketable topic in modern science. Because of the difficulties related to directly examining and testing human guts, we turn to mathematical modeling. We use an Ordinary Differential Equations (ODE) model and the Monod growth form to model several functional groups and important products of fermentation. We modify an existing metabolite-explicit model, adding a hydrogen term and modeling its interactions with the existing microbes. We compare constant glucose inflow with three types of time-dependent glucose inflow. We conclude that glucose input is an indispensable aspect of this model, and its modulation can have substantial effects on each microbe.