Explaining why we used the equivalent circuits

To model the complex interaction of activations and repressions in the genetic circuit that we were investigating, it was necessary to model a slightly modified versions of the original systems. We did this to save time and to keep the models comparatively simple. Modelling equivalent systems and making educated assumptions are well-established areas of engineering, and we therefore concluded that the equivalent circuits provided a very accurate representation of the real system. As the main initial goal of the modelling was to obtain parameters from the wet lab data that could predict the future response of the system, the quality of the end model has a much greater dependence on the accuracy to which we could determine the parameters than any assumptions the model made.

To summarise, as long as the we found the correct parameters for the equivalent model, we could get reliable predictions from this simulation.