A pathway model of lipid metabolism to predict the effect of genetic variability on lipid levels

Complex phenotypes such as serum lipid concentrations involve numerous gene s and require the analysis of the combined effects of these gene products. We modeled the interactions of six key lipid metabolism genes by means of d ifferential equations. We tested the model by inserting the effects of know n mutations in the low-density lipoprotein receptor gene and the lipoprotei n lipase gene, as well as the effects of a high-fat diet, and observed that the predictions corresponded very well to published measurements. Models s uch as the one that we present here will become indispensable for analyzing and understanding the effects of variation in multiple genes.