Leung, Samuel2010-02-162010-02-1620062010-02-16http://hdl.handle.net/1828/2200Can one classify biochemical pathways based on their topology? What is the topology of a biochemical pathway? What are the fundamental principles underlying different biochemical pathways involved in similar functional areas? Will one be able to characterize pathway "motifs" similar to motifs in proteins - i.e. reoccurring patterns in pathways? This thesis describes an attempt to develop a quantitative framework for the general representation and comparison of biochemical pathways. This quantitative framework involves a mathematical model to represent biochemical pathways and a set of similarity criteria to compare these biochemical pathways. We anticipate that such a tool would allow biologists to answer important questions such as the ones mentioned above.enAvailable to the World Wide Webbiochemistrybioinformaticsmathematical modelsUVic Subject Index::Sciences and Engineering::Chemistry::BiochemistryUVic Subject Index::Sciences and Engineering::Applied Sciences::Computer scienceThesis