A computer-based model of the metabolism of sugar phosphates by human erythrocytes has been developed to assist in the understanding of the biochemical transformations occurring in the pentose phosphate pathway. These transformations are reflected in the changes, with time, of the relative intensities of the metabolite peaks apparent in 1H, 13C and 31P NMR spectra. The deterministic model consists of 79 reactions interconnected in a defined structure and characterized by 155 rate constants. It also includes 17 different enzymes, 69 enzyme forms, 32 metabolites, and initial value of time and concentration of each of the reactants. The differential equations describing the time-dependence of the concentrations of the reactants are generated and then solved by using the computer program BIOSSIM, which is designed to solve arrays of "stiff" differential equations. We synthesized [1-13C]D-ribose 5-phosphate and used 13C and 31P NMR to monitor its transformation into various intermediates of the pentose phosphate pathway, after the addition of diluted haemolysates which had previously been depleted of nicotinamide- and adenine-nucleotides. The concentrations of several of the reactants were able to be quantified, while other peaks in both the 13C and 31P spectra are yet to be assigned with confidence. There was reasonable qualitative agreement between some aspects of the computer simulation of the proposed metabolic system and the experimental data.