Title: Estimating parameters in the caspase-activated apoptosis system

Authors: Fang-Xiang Wu, Zhong-Ke Shi, Lei Mu

Addresses: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Division of Biomedical Engineering, University of Saskatchewan, 57 Campus Dr., Saskatoon, SK, S7N 5A9, Canada. ' College of Automatic Control, Northwestern Polytechnical University, 127 YouYi Rd., Xi'an, Shaanxi 710072, China. ' Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Saskatchewan, 57 Campus Dr., Saskatoon, SK, S7N 5A9, Canada

Abstract: Owing to their role in several diseases, the caspase activated apoptosis system has been paid much attention in recent years. Based on mass-conservation principle and kinetic rate law, a system of nonlinear differential equations has been derived to describe the dynamics of caspase activation. The nonlinear terms in the system contain important parameters to be estimated for modelling and analysis. In this paper, we propose a methodology for estimating parameters in the caspase-activated apoptosis system, which consists of five modules. The simulation and analysis show that the results from our proposed method are better than those from existing methods.

Keywords: parameter estimation; caspase activated apoptosis; complexity analysis; optimal experimental design; reaction rates; stoichiometric matrix; modelling; mass conservation; kinetic rate; nonlinear differential equations.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBET.2010.035508

International Journal of Biomedical Engineering and Technology, 2010 Vol.4 No.4, pp.338 - 354

Published online: 30 Sep 2010 *

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