Units

Fundamental Units

To describe a spatial model we need to define the following fundamental units:

• amount (e.g. Mole)

• length (e.g. metre)

• time (e.g. second)

Volume is not a fundamental unit. However, for user convenience we treat volume as a fundamental unit

• volume (e.g. litre)

This allows the use of units such as cm for length and mMol/mL for concentration, instead of the equivalent but less common mMol/cm^3.

Derived Units

All quantities in the model have units that can be written as some combination of these fundamental units:

• species concentrations

  • have units of amount / volume

• reactions inside a compartment

  • describe the rate of change of the concentration of species

  • have units of concentration / time, i.e. amount / volume / time

• reactions between two compartments

  • describe that rate at which a unit amount of species crosses a unit area of the membrane

  • where the membrane is the area where the two compartments touch each other

  • have units of amount / membrane-area / time, i.e. amount / length / length / time

• diffusion constants

  • have units of area / time, i.e. length * length / time

More information

For more information see units.pdf