Fig. 4.

Overview of the components and structure of multi-time scale, multi-level, and mechanistic models. Here, we exemplify the structure of these kinds of models by an interconnected model describing whole-body weight regulation (Hall et al., 2011), glucose and insulin homeostasis (Dalla Man et al., 2007), and intracellular insulin signalling in fat cells (Brännmark et al., 2013, Nyman et al., 2011). This combined model can simulate what happens on a time-scale of minutes, hours, and months, and with an uncertainty (light blue) dependent on its fit to data. (For interpretation of the references to colour in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)