| Publications about 'systems identification' |
| Articles in journal or book chapters |
| This letter discusses a paper in the same journal which reported a method for reconstructing network topologies. Here we show that the method is a variant of a previously published method, modular response analysis. We also demonstrate that the implementation of the algorithm in that paper using statistical similarity measures as a proxy for global network responses to perturbations is erroneous and its performance is overestimated. |
| This paper describes a potential pitfall of perturbation-based approaches to network inference It is shows experimentally, and then explained mathematically, how even in the simplest signaling systems, perturbation methods may lead to paradoxical conclusions: for any given pair of two components X and Y, and depending upon the specific intervention on Y, either an activation or a repression of X could be inferred. The experiments are performed in an in vitro minimal system, thus isolating the effect and showing that it cannot be explained by feedbacks due to unknown intermediates; this system utilizes proteins from a pathway in mammalian (and other eukaryotic) cells that play a central role in proliferation, gene expression, differentiation, mitosis, cell survival, and apoptosis and is a perturbation target of contemporary therapies for various types of cancers. The results show that the simplistic view of intracellular signaling networks being made up of activation and repression links is seriously misleading, and call for a fundamental rethinking of signaling network analysis and inference methods. |
| The ``reverse engineering problem'' in systems biology is that of unraveling of the web of interactions among the components of protein and gene regulatory networks, so as to map out the direct or local interactions among components. These direct interactions capture the topology of the functional network. An intrinsic difficulty in capturing these direct interactions, at least in intact cells, is that any perturbation to a particular gene or signaling component may rapidly propagate throughout the network, thus causing global changes which cannot be easily distinguished from direct effects. Thus, a major goal in reverse engineering is to use these observed global responses - such as steady-state changes in concentrations of active proteins, mRNA levels, or transcription rates - in order to infer the local interactions between individual nodes. One approach to solving this global-to-local problem is the ``Modular Response Analysis'' (MRA) method proposed in work of the author with Kholodenko et. al. (PNAS, 2002) and further elaborated in other papers. The basic method deals only with steady-state data. However, recently, quasi-steady state MRA has been used by Santos et. al. (Nature Cell Biology, 2007) for quantifying positive and negative feedback effects in the Raf/Mek/Erk MAPK network in rat adrenal pheochromocytoma (PC-12) cells. This paper presents an overview of the MRA technique, as well as a generalization of the algorithm to that quasi-steady state case. |
| This paper studies a computational problem motivated by the modular response analysis method for reverse engineering of protein and gene networks. This set-cover problem is hard to solve exactly for large networks, but efficient approximation algorithms are given and their complexity is analyzed. |
| This paper investigates computational complexity aspects of a combinatorial problem that arises in the reverse engineering of protein and gene networks, showing relations to an appropriate set multicover problem with large "coverage" factor, and providing a non-trivial analysis of a simple randomized polynomial-time approximation algorithm for the problem. |
| Biological complexity and limited quantitative measurements impose severe challenges to standard engineering methodologies for systems identification. This paper presents an approach, justified by the theory of universal inputs for distinguishability, based on replacing unmodeled dynamics by fictitious `dependent inputs'. The approach is particularly useful in validation experiments, because it allows one to fit model parameters to experimental data generated by a reference (wild-type) organism and then testing this model on data generated by a variation (mutant), so long as the mutations only affect the unmodeled dynamics that produce the dependent inputs. As a case study, this paper addresses the pathways that control the nitrogen uptake fluxes in baker's yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae enabling it to optimally respond to changes in nitrogen availability. Well-defined perturbation experiments were performed on cells growing in steady-state. Time-series data of extracellular and intracellular metabolites were obtained, as well as mRNA levels. A nonlinear model was proposed, and shown to be structurally identifiable given input/output data. The identified model correctly predicted the responses of different yeast strains and different perturbations. |
| One of the fundamental problems of cell biology is the understanding of complex regulatory networks. Such networks are ubiquitous in cells, and knowledge of their properties is essential for the understanding of cellular behavior. This paper studies the effect of experimental uncertainty on the accuracy of the inferred structure of the networks determined using the method in "Untangling the wires: a novel strategy to trace functional interactions in signaling and gene networks". |
| This paper takes a computational learning theory approach to a problem of linear systems identification. It is assumed that input signals have only a finite number k of frequency components, and systems to be identified have dimension no greater than n. The main result establishes that the sample complexity needed for identification scales polynomially with n and logarithmically with k. |
| High-throughput technologies have facilitated the acquisition of large genomics and proteomics data sets. However, these data provide snapshots of cellular behavior, rather than help us reveal causal relations. Here, we propose how these technologies can be utilized to infer the topology and strengths of connections among genes, proteins, and metabolites by monitoring time-dependent responses of cellular networks to experimental interventions. We show that all connections leading to a given network node, e.g., to a particular gene, can be deduced from responses to perturbations none of which directly influences that node, e.g., using strains with knock-outs to other genes. To infer all interactions from stationary data, each node should be perturbed separately or in combination with other nodes. Monitoring time series provides richer information and does not require perturbations to all nodes. |
| Emerging technologies have enabled the acquisition of large genomics and proteomics data sets. This paper proposes a novel quantitative method for determining functional interactions in cellular signaling and gene networks. It can be used to explore cell systems at a mechanistic level, or applied within a modular framework, which dramatically decreases the number of variables to be assayed. The topology and strength of network connections are retrieved from experimentally measured network responses to successive perturbations of all modules. In addition, the method can reveal functional interactions even when the components of the system are not all known, in which case some connections retrieved by the analysis will not be direct but correspond to the interaction routes through unidentified elements. The method is tested and illustrated using computer-generated responses of a modeled MAPK cascade and gene network. |
| Conference articles |
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