Christian Knüpfer

Sembiotics: Formal Semantics of Bio-Models Involved Persons: Christian Knüpfer (Ph.D. student) Clemens Beckstein (Ph.D. supervisor, Artificial Intelligence Group) Peter Dittrich (Ph.D. supervisor, Bio Systems Anlysis Group)

Project Description

Systems Biology reconstructs biological phenomena in order to develop explanatory models of living systems. These models are represented precisely in terms of mathematical expressions. However, the meaning of a model usually is not formally specified but only described in natural language.

In this project we develop a framework for specifying the meaning of bio-models.

So far we have shown that semantics appears on different levels: the meaning of the model as a whole, the meaning of the model's components, and the meaning of the model's behaviour. Each level has an intrinsic and extrinsic facet.

Case Study: Tyson's Models of the Cell Cycle

Description of the Models

We use the following two ODE-models as a case study for the formalisation of the semantics of bio-models. The models are from Tyson (1991). Both models describe the formation and activation of the maturation promoting factor (MPF), a hetero dimer made of the two proteins cyclin and cdc2. Model 1 consists of a set of ordinary differential equations (ODEs) where each equation models the temporal evolution of the concentrations of one of the involved substances wrt. the concentrations of the other substances. Involved substances are: cdc2 (C2), phosphorylated cdc2 (CP), inactive MPF (pM), active MPF (M), cyclin (Y), phosphorylated cyclin (YP), total cdc2 (CT), adenosine triphosphate (~P), and amino acids (aa). Model 2 is a mathematical abstraction of Model 1 under certain additional biological assumptions. The k_i are kinetic rate coefficients.

Phase 1: Informal Characterisation of the Model Meaning

In order to get a first expression how the semantics of a bio-model may look like we investigate the meaning of Model 1 from the perspective of a human biologist. We structure the resulting information by means of our Meaning Facets. The resulting Table 1 can be seen as an extension of the corresponding entry BIOMD0000000005 in the BioModels Database wrt. the following aspects:

1. The mathematical (intrinsic) meaning is not considered in BioModels Database at all.
2. Tyson identifies three possible modes of behaviours of both models (cf. Tyson (1991)) and assigns biological phenomena to this modes. This very important aspect of the meaning of Model 1 is not regarded in the BioModels Database but in the behavioural facets in Table 1.

Phase 2: Semi-Formal Specification of the Model Semantics

The Table 2 represent both elementary facts of the semantics of the Tyson models and the grounding of the biological meaning by means of external references (hyperlinks). They make reference to and contribute part of a Model Ontology (MO) that formally describes concepts typically used in biological modelling. We call a fact elementary if it cannot be inferred from other facts. Thus the tables provide a minimal commitment to the semantics of both models which is necessary to account for all meaning facets and the relations among them.

Table 2 contains both the intrinsic (red IDs in the first column) and the extrinsic (black IDs) elementary facts. Because of the clean semantics of mathematical expressions most of the intrinsic structural meaning can be inferred from the given ODE systems. Therefor the intrinsic meaning structure is sparse in Table 2, especially for Model 1. Extended tables containing also important inferred facts will coming soon.

Phase 3: Formal Description of the Model Semantics

Phase 4: Reasoning by Means of the Formal Model Semantics

References

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Publications

Christian Knüpfer, Clemens Beckstein, Peter Dittrich (2007)
How to Formalise the Meaning of a Bio-Model: A Case Study
In: BMC Systems Biology 1 (Suppl 1), BioSysBio 2007: Systems Biology, Bioinformatics, Synthetic Biology — Meeting abstracts. Manchester, UK. 11-13 January 2007, p.28. preprint (pdf), BibTeX.

Christian Knüpfer, Clemens Beckstein, Peter Dittrich (2006)
Towards a Semantic Description of Bio-Models: Meaning Facets -- A Case Study
In: Ananiadou, S., Fluck, J. (Eds.): Proceedings of the Second International Symposium on Semantic Mining in Biomedicine (SMBM 2006), Jena, April 9-12, 2006. CEUR-WS, Aachen, RWTH University, pp.97-100.
online at CEUR-WS, print version (pdf), BibTeX.

Funding

Contact

Clemens Beckstein
Artificial Intelligence Group
Department of Mathematics and Computer Science
Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena
D-07743 Jena
Germany

Peter Dittrich
Bio Systems Analysis Group
Department of Mathematics and Computer Science
Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena
D-07743 Jena
Germany

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"2007-07-15T11:06:42+0100" Christian Knüpfer