Mathematical Modeling of Transport and Degradation of Feedstuffs in the Small Intestine

TL;DR

This paper presents a comprehensive mathematical model of small intestine digestion, integrating transport, enzymatic degradation, and nutrient absorption using coupled differential equations, adaptable to various feedstuffs and non-ruminant animals.

Contribution

It introduces a general, numerical model of digestion processes that simultaneously considers bolus movement, degradation, and absorption in the small intestine.

Findings

Numerical solutions align with experimental data.

Model demonstrates adaptability to different feedstuffs.

Provides a framework for predicting bolus composition and velocity.

Abstract

We describe a mathematical modeling of the digestion in the small intestine. The main interest of our work is to consider, at the same time, different aspects of the digestion i.e. the transport of the bolus all along the intestine, feedstuffs degradation according to the enzymes and local physical conditions, and nutrients absorption. A system of coupled ordinary differential equations is used to model these phenomena. The major unknowns of this system are the position of the bolus and its composition. This system of equations is solved numerically. We present different numerical computations for the degradation, absorption and transport of the bolus with acceptable accuracy with experimental data. The main feature and interest of this model are its generality. Even if we are at an early stage of development, our approach can be adapted to treat any kind of feedstuffs in any non-ruminant animal to predict the composition and velocity of bolus in the small intestine.