Whole-body models

Human2 serves as the basis for whole-body models (WBMs) that connect organ-specific GEMs through shared biofluid compartments (blood, lumen, bile, cerebrospinal fluid, urine, sweat, and others) to simulate interorgan metabolite exchange.

As described in Luo et al. (2026) PNAS, WBMs were reconstructed for five sex- and age-specific groups (adult male, adult female, elderly male, elderly female, and fetus). A simplified coreWBM, retaining seven key organs and a unified blood compartment, and an enzyme-constrained ec-coreWBM (see Enzyme-constrained models) were used to simulate whole-body energy metabolism across diets and to model dynamic metabolic adaptation during feeding and fasting (dynamic FBA).

Resources

• Reconstruction code and tutorials: LiLabTsinghua/DevelopWBM
• Models and data (tissue/organ models, WBMs, coreWBMs, ec-coreWBMs): Zenodo record 15117362

Refer to the DevelopWBM repository for step-by-step instructions on building and simulating whole-body models with Human2.