Biological Mechanism on a Chip: Modeling and Realization of Growth Hormone Secretion Mechanism

In this paper, we present a simulation and hardware realization on a compact electronic chip of a simplified Growth Hormone secretion mechanism. After realization, the chip is a stand-alone electronic device that mimics the mechanism. The chip is a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA). The mechanism is developed based on a modified bio-mathematical nonlinear delay differential equations. The model explores the effects of Growth Hormone Releasing Hormone (GHRH), Somatotropin Release-Inhibiting factor (SRIF), and Ghrelin (GHS) on Growth Hormone (GH). A Computer Aided Design (CAD) package that includes a Hardware Description Language (HDL) simulator has been implemented to write and compile the HDL code, test the code, verify the simulation, and synthesize the code into Register Transfer Level (RTL) logic blocks. After Synthesis, the logic blocks are downloaded onto the FPGA. Our results indicate the output of the chip and the mathematical simulation are identical.