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Xu J, Smith L. Curating models from BioModels: Developing a workflow for creating OMEX files. BIORXIV : THE PREPRINT SERVER FOR BIOLOGY 2024:2024.03.15.585236. [PMID: 38559029 PMCID: PMC10979985 DOI: 10.1101/2024.03.15.585236] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 04/04/2024]
Abstract
The reproducibility of computational biology models can be greatly facilitated by widely adopted standards and public repositories. We examined 50 models from the BioModels Database and attempted to validate the original curation and correct some of them if necessary. For each model, we reproduced these published results using Tellurium. Once reproduced we manually created a new set of files, with the model information stored by the Systems Biology Markup Language (SBML), and simulation instructions stored by the Simulation Experiment Description Markup Language (SED-ML), and everything included in an Open Modeling EXchange (OMEX) file, which could be used with a variety of simulators to reproduce the same results. On the one hand, the validation procedure of 50 models developed a manual workflow that we would use to build an automatic platform to help users more easily curate and verify models in the future. On the other hand, these exercises allowed us to find the limitations and possible enhancement of the current curation and tooling to verify and curate models.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jin Xu
- Department of Bioengineering, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA
| | - Lucian Smith
- Department of Bioengineering, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA
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Michael CT, Almohri SA, Linderman JJ, Kirschner DE. A framework for multi-scale intervention modeling: virtual cohorts, virtual clinical trials, and model-to-model comparisons. FRONTIERS IN SYSTEMS BIOLOGY 2024; 3:1283341. [PMID: 39310676 PMCID: PMC11415237 DOI: 10.3389/fsysb.2023.1283341] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 09/25/2024]
Abstract
Computational models of disease progression have been constructed for a myriad of pathologies. Typically, the conceptual implementation for pathology-related in-silico intervention studies has been ad-hoc and similar in design to experimental studies. We introduce a multi-scale interventional design (MID) framework toward two key goals: tracking of disease dynamics from within-body to patient to population scale; and tracking impact(s) of interventions across these same spatial scales. Our MID framework prioritizes investigation of impact on individual patients within virtual pre-clinical trials, instead of replicating the design of experimental studies. We apply a MID framework to develop, organize, and analyze a cohort of virtual patients for the study of tuberculosis (TB) as an example disease. For this study, we use HostSim: our next-generation whole patient-scale computational model of individuals infected with Mycobacterium tuberculosis. HostSim captures infection within lungs by tracking multiple granulomas, together with dynamics occurring with blood and lymph node compartments, the compartments involved during pulmonary TB. We extend HostSim to include a simple drug intervention as an example of our approach and use our MID framework to quantify the impact of treatment at cellular and tissue (granuloma), patient (lungs, lymph nodes and blood), and population scales. Sensitivity analyses allow us to determine which features of virtual patients are the strongest predictors of intervention efficacy across scales. These insights allow us to identify patient-heterogeneous mechanisms that drive outcomes across scales.
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Affiliation(s)
- Christian T. Michael
- Department of Microbiology & Immunology, University of Michigan - Michigan Medicine, Ann Arbor, MI, USA
- Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA
| | - Sayed Ahmad Almohri
- Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA
| | | | - Denise E. Kirschner
- Department of Microbiology & Immunology, University of Michigan - Michigan Medicine, Ann Arbor, MI, USA
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Yang PC, Purawat S, Ieong PU, Jeng MT, DeMarco KR, Vorobyov I, McCulloch AD, Altintas I, Amaro RE, Clancy CE. A demonstration of modularity, reuse, reproducibility, portability and scalability for modeling and simulation of cardiac electrophysiology using Kepler Workflows. PLoS Comput Biol 2019; 15:e1006856. [PMID: 30849072 PMCID: PMC6426265 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1006856] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/21/2018] [Revised: 03/20/2019] [Accepted: 02/08/2019] [Indexed: 01/18/2023] Open
Abstract
Multi-scale computational modeling is a major branch of computational biology as evidenced by the US federal interagency Multi-Scale Modeling Consortium and major international projects. It invariably involves specific and detailed sequences of data analysis and simulation, often with multiple tools and datasets, and the community recognizes improved modularity, reuse, reproducibility, portability and scalability as critical unmet needs in this area. Scientific workflows are a well-recognized strategy for addressing these needs in scientific computing. While there are good examples if the use of scientific workflows in bioinformatics, medical informatics, biomedical imaging and data analysis, there are fewer examples in multi-scale computational modeling in general and cardiac electrophysiology in particular. Cardiac electrophysiology simulation is a mature area of multi-scale computational biology that serves as an excellent use case for developing and testing new scientific workflows. In this article, we develop, describe and test a computational workflow that serves as a proof of concept of a platform for the robust integration and implementation of a reusable and reproducible multi-scale cardiac cell and tissue model that is expandable, modular and portable. The workflow described leverages Python and Kepler-Python actor for plotting and pre/post-processing. During all stages of the workflow design, we rely on freely available open-source tools, to make our workflow freely usable by scientists. We present a computational workflow as a proof of concept for integration and implementation of a reusable and reproducible cardiac multi-scale electrophysiology model that is expandable, modular and portable. This framework enables scientists to create intuitive, user-friendly and flexible end-to-end automated scientific workflows using a graphical user interface. Kepler is an advanced open-source platform that supports multiple models of computation. The underlying workflow engine handles scalability, provenance, reproducibility aspects of the code, performs orchestration of data flow, and automates execution on heterogeneous computing resources. One of the main advantages of workflow utilization is the integration of code written in multiple languages Standardization occurs at the interfaces of the workflow elements and allows for general applications and easy comparison and integration of code from different research groups or even multiple programmers coding in different languages for various purposes from the same group. A workflow driven problem-solving approach enables domain scientists to focus on resolving the core science questions, and delegates the computational and process management burden to the underlying Workflow. The workflow driven approach allows scaling the computational experiment with distributed data-parallel execution on multiple computing platforms, such as, HPC resources, GPU clusters, Cloud etc. The workflow framework tracks software version information along with hardware information to allow users an opportunity to trace any variation in workflow outcome to the system configurations.
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Affiliation(s)
- Pei-Chi Yang
- Department of Physiology and Membrane Biology, Department of Pharmacology, School of Medicine, University of California Davis, Davis, California, United States of America
| | - Shweta Purawat
- San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC), University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, California, United States of America
| | - Pek U. Ieong
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, National Biomedical Computation Resource, Drug Design Data Resource (D3R), University of California San Diego, La Jolla, California, United States of America
| | - Mao-Tsuen Jeng
- Department of Physiology and Membrane Biology, Department of Pharmacology, School of Medicine, University of California Davis, Davis, California, United States of America
| | - Kevin R. DeMarco
- Department of Physiology and Membrane Biology, Department of Pharmacology, School of Medicine, University of California Davis, Davis, California, United States of America
| | - Igor Vorobyov
- Department of Physiology and Membrane Biology, Department of Pharmacology, School of Medicine, University of California Davis, Davis, California, United States of America
| | - Andrew D. McCulloch
- Departments of Bioengineering and Medicine, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, California, United States of America
| | - Ilkay Altintas
- San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC), University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, California, United States of America
| | - Rommie E. Amaro
- Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, National Biomedical Computation Resource, Drug Design Data Resource (D3R), University of California San Diego, La Jolla, California, United States of America
| | - Colleen E. Clancy
- Department of Physiology and Membrane Biology, Department of Pharmacology, School of Medicine, University of California Davis, Davis, California, United States of America
- * E-mail:
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Stanford NJ, Scharm M, Dobson PD, Golebiewski M, Hucka M, Kothamachu VB, Nickerson D, Owen S, Pahle J, Wittig U, Waltemath D, Goble C, Mendes P, Snoep J. Data Management in Computational Systems Biology: Exploring Standards, Tools, Databases, and Packaging Best Practices. Methods Mol Biol 2019; 2049:285-314. [PMID: 31602618 DOI: 10.1007/978-1-4939-9736-7_17] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 12/14/2022]
Abstract
Computational systems biology involves integrating heterogeneous datasets in order to generate models. These models can assist with understanding and prediction of biological phenomena. Generating datasets and integrating them into models involves a wide range of scientific expertise. As a result these datasets are often collected by one set of researchers, and exchanged with others researchers for constructing the models. For this process to run smoothly the data and models must be FAIR-findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable. In order for data and models to be FAIR they must be structured in consistent and predictable ways, and described sufficiently for other researchers to understand them. Furthermore, these data and models must be shared with other researchers, with appropriately controlled sharing permissions, before and after publication. In this chapter we explore the different data and model standards that assist with structuring, describing, and sharing. We also highlight the popular standards and sharing databases within computational systems biology.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Martin Scharm
- Department of Systems Biology and Bioinformatics, University of Rostock, Rostock, Germany
| | - Paul D Dobson
- School of Computer Science, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK
| | - Martin Golebiewski
- Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies (HITS), Heidelberg, Germany
| | - Michael Hucka
- Computing and Mathematical Sciences, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA
| | | | - David Nickerson
- Auckland Bioengineering Institute, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand
| | - Stuart Owen
- School of Computer Science, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK
| | - Jürgen Pahle
- BIOMS/BioQuant, Heidelberg University, Heidelberg, Germany.
| | - Ulrike Wittig
- Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies (HITS), Heidelberg, Germany
| | - Dagmar Waltemath
- Medical Informatics, University Medicine Greifswald, Greifswald, Germany
| | - Carole Goble
- School of Computer Science, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK
| | - Pedro Mendes
- Centre for Quantitative Medicine, University of Connecticut, Farmington, CT, USA
| | - Jacky Snoep
- School of Computer Science, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK.,Biochemistry, Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch, South Africa
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Medley JK, Choi K, König M, Smith L, Gu S, Hellerstein J, Sealfon SC, Sauro HM. Tellurium notebooks-An environment for reproducible dynamical modeling in systems biology. PLoS Comput Biol 2018; 14:e1006220. [PMID: 29906293 PMCID: PMC6021116 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1006220] [Citation(s) in RCA: 34] [Impact Index Per Article: 5.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/16/2017] [Revised: 06/27/2018] [Accepted: 05/20/2018] [Indexed: 01/26/2023] Open
Abstract
The considerable difficulty encountered in reproducing the results of published dynamical models limits validation, exploration and reuse of this increasingly large biomedical research resource. To address this problem, we have developed Tellurium Notebook, a software system for model authoring, simulation, and teaching that facilitates building reproducible dynamical models and reusing models by 1) providing a notebook environment which allows models, Python code, and narrative to be intermixed, 2) supporting the COMBINE archive format during model development for capturing model information in an exchangeable format and 3) enabling users to easily simulate and edit public COMBINE-compliant models from public repositories to facilitate studying model dynamics, variants and test cases. Tellurium Notebook, a Python–based Jupyter–like environment, is designed to seamlessly inter-operate with these community standards by automating conversion between COMBINE standards formulations and corresponding in–line, human–readable representations. Thus, Tellurium brings to systems biology the strategy used by other literate notebook systems such as Mathematica. These capabilities allow users to edit every aspect of the standards–compliant models and simulations, run the simulations in–line, and re–export to standard formats. We provide several use cases illustrating the advantages of our approach and how it allows development and reuse of models without requiring technical knowledge of standards. Adoption of Tellurium should accelerate model development, reproducibility and reuse. There is considerable value to systems and synthetic biology in creating reproducible models. An essential element of reproducibility is the use of community standards, an often challenging undertaking for modelers. This article describes Tellurium Notebook, a tool for developing dynamical models that provides an intuitive approach to building and reusing models built with community standards. Tellurium automates embedding human–readable representations of COMBINE archives in literate coding notebooks, bringing to systems biology this strategy central to other literate notebook systems such as Mathematica. We show that the ability to easily edit this human–readable representation enables users to test models under a variety of conditions, thereby providing a way to create, reuse, and modify standard–encoded models and simulations, regardless of the user’s level of technical knowledge of said standards.
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Affiliation(s)
- J. Kyle Medley
- Department of Bioengineering, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, United States of America
- * E-mail:
| | - Kiri Choi
- Department of Bioengineering, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, United States of America
| | - Matthias König
- Institute for Theoretical Biology, Humboldt University of Berlin, Berlin, Germany
| | - Lucian Smith
- Department of Bioengineering, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, United States of America
| | - Stanley Gu
- Department of Bioengineering, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, United States of America
| | - Joseph Hellerstein
- eScience Institute, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, United States of America
| | - Stuart C. Sealfon
- Department of Neurology and Center for Advanced Research on Diagnostic Assays Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, New York, United States of America
| | - Herbert M. Sauro
- Department of Bioengineering, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, United States of America
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