Plenary-05 : Lee A. Segel Prize for Best Paper & Student Paper

Best Paper Prize Winner

---

Paper: "Parameter identifiability in PDE models of fluorescence recovery after photobleaching" by Maria-Veronica Ciocanel*, Lee Ding, Lucas Mastromatteo, Sarah Reichheld, Sarah Cabral, Kimberly Mowry, Björn Sandstede

Parameter identifiability for PDE models of fluorescence microscopy experiments in cell biology

The dynamics of intracellular proteins is key to many cellular functions. Our motivation stems from studying dynamic RNA and binding proteins that organize in biomolecular condensates. These cellular compartments have no membrane and have been shown to play crucial roles in spatially regulating gene expression and in other developmental processes. One of the most versatile experimental techniques for probing protein dynamics in living cells is FRAP (fluorescence recovery after photobleaching). This experiment generates time-series data that average out spatial information about diffusion, transport, and binding dynamics of proteins. Partial differential equations (PDE) models provide the appropriate framework to model the fluorescence dynamics and to infer parameters such as diffusion coefficients or reaction rates. However, it is not known whether these parameters can be uniquely identified based on the data available from FRAP experiments. We investigate limitations of known methods in assessing parameter identifiability for PDE models and propose methods for learning parameter combinations based on re-parametrization and profile likelihoods analysis. In recent work, we use these methods to provide insights on the behavior of the proteins forming biomolecular condensates in different cell regions and in healthy and mutant settings.

---

Paper: "" by