Papers by J. Wang and E.D. Sontag

In several applications, including in synthetic biology, one often has input/output data on a system composed of many modules, and although the modules’ input/output functions and signals may be unknown, knowledge of the composition architecture can allow to significantly reduce the amount of training data required to learn the system’s input/output mapping. Learning the modules’ input/output functions is also necessary for designing new systems from different composition architectures. Here, we propose a modular learning framework, which incorporates prior knowledge of the system’s compositional structure to (a) identify the composing modules’ input/output functions from the system’s input/output data and (b) achieve this by using a reduced amount of data compared to what would be required without knowledge of the compositional structure. To achieve this, we introduce the notion of modular identifiability, which allows to recover the modules’ input/output functions from a subset of the system’s input/output data, and provide theoretical guarantees on a class of systems motivated by genetic circuits. We illustrate the theory through computational studies, showing that a neural network (NNET) that accounts for the compositional structure is able to learn the composing modules’ input/output functions and to predict the system’s output on inputs which lie outside of the training set. By reducing the need for experimental data, and allowing modules’ identification, this framework offers the potential to ease the design of synthetic biological circuits and of multi-module systems more generally.

Emergent responses of the immune system result from the integration of molecular and cellular networks over time and across multiple organs. High-content and high-throughput analysis technologies, concomitantly with data-driven and mechanistic modeling, hold promise for the systematic interrogation of these complex pathways. However, connecting genetic variation and molecular mechanisms to individual phenotypes and health outcomes has proven elusive. Gaps remain in data, and disagreements persist about the value of mechanistic modeling for immunology. This paper presents perspectives that emerged from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID) workshop `Complex Systems Science, Modeling and Immunity' and subsequent discussions regarding the potential synergy of high-throughput data acquisition, data-driven modeling, and mechanistic modeling to define new mechanisms of immunological disease and to accelerate the translation of these insights into therapies.