A parsimonious model of blood glucose homeostasis.

The mathematical modelling of biological systems has historically followed one of two approaches: comprehensive and minimal. In comprehensive models, the involved biological pathways are modelled independently, then brought together as an ensemble of equations that represents the system being studied, most often in the form of a large system of coupled differential equations. This approach often contains a very large number of tuneable parameters (> 100) where each describes some physical or biochemical subproperty.