  Systems biology and whole-cell modelling are demanding increasingly
comprehensive mathematical models of cellular biochemistry. These models
require the development of simplified models of specific processes which
capture essential biophysical features but without unnecessarily complexity.
Recently there has been renewed interest in thermodynamically-based modelling
of cellular processes. Here we present an approach to developing of simplified
yet thermodynamically consistent (hence physically plausible) models which can
readily be incorporated into large scale biochemical descriptions but which do
not require full mechanistic detail of the underlying processes. We illustrate
the approach through development of a simplified, physically plausible model of
the mitochondrial electron transport chain and show that the simplified model
behaves like the full system.
