Biology subjects

Ostaszewski, M.

Publications and source records attributed to Ostaszewski, M..

4 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2020

Reusability and composability in process description maps: RAS-RAF-MEK-ERK signalling

Detailed maps of the molecular basis of the disease are powerful tools for interpreting data and building predictive models. Modularity and composability are considered necessary network features for large-scale collaborative efforts to build comprehensive molecular descriptions of disease mechanisms. An effective way to create and manage large systems is to compose multiple subsystems. Composable network components could effectively harness the contributions of many individuals and enable teams to seamlessly assemble many individual components into comprehensive maps. We examine manually-built versions of the RAS-RAF-MEK-ERK cascade from the Atlas of Cancer Signalling Network, PANTHER and Reactome databases and review them in terms of their reusability and composability for assembling new disease models. We identify design principles for managing complex systems that could make it easier for investigators to share and reuse network components. We demonstrate the main challenges including incompatible levels of detail and ambiguous representation of complexes and highlight the need to address these challenges.

systems biology↗

bioRxiv2020

COVID-19 Disease Map, a computational knowledge repository of SARS-CoV-2 virus-host interaction mechanisms

We describe a large-scale community effort to build an open-access, interoperable, and computable repository of COVID-19 molecular mechanisms - the COVID-19 Disease Map. We discuss the tools, platforms, and guidelines necessary for the distributed development of its contents by a multi-faceted community of biocurators, domain experts, bioinformaticians, and computational biologists. We highlight the role of relevant databases and text mining approaches in enrichment and validation of the curated mechanisms. We describe the contents of the Map and their relevance to the molecular pathophysiology of COVID-19 and the analytical and computational modelling approaches that can be applied for mechanistic data interpretation and predictions. We conclude by demonstrating concrete applications of our work through several use cases and highlight new testable hypotheses.

systems biology↗

bioRxiv2020

BioKC: a collaborative platform for systems biology model curation and annotation

Curation of biomedical knowledge into standardised and inter-operable systems biology models is essential for studying complex biological processes. However, systems-level curation is a laborious manual process, especially when facing ever increasing growth of domain literature. Currently, these systems-level curation efforts concentrate around dedicated pathway databases, with a limited input from the research community. The demand for systems biology knowledge increases with new findings demonstrating elaborate relationships between multiple molecules, pathways and cells. This new challenge calls for novel collaborative tools and platforms allowing to improve the quality and the output of the curation process. In particular, in the current systems biology environment, curation tools lack reviewing features and are not well suited for an open, community-based curation workflows. An important concern is the complexity of the curation process and the limitations of the tools supporting it. Currently, systems-level curation combines model-building with diagram layout design. However, diagram editing tools offer limited annotation features. On the other hand, text-oriented tools have insufficient capabilities representing and annotating relationships between biological entities. Separating model curation and annotation from diagram editing enables iterative and distributed building of annotated models. Here, we present BioKC (Biological Knowledge Curation), a web-based collaborative platform for the curation and annotation of biomedical knowledge following the standard data model from Systems Biology Markup Language (SBML).

systems biology↗

bioRxiv2020

Mechanistic modeling of the SARS-CoV-2 disease map

Here we present a web interface that implements a comprehensive mechanistic model of the SARS-CoV-2 disease map in which the detailed activity of the human signaling circuits related to the viral infection and the different antiviral responses, including immune and inflammatory activities, can be inferred from gene expression experiments. Moreover, given to the mechanistic properties of the model, the effect of potential interventions, such as knock-downs, over-expression or drug effects (currently the system models the effect of more than 8000 DrugBank drugs) can be studied in specific conditions. By providing a holistic, systems biology approach to the understanding of the complexities of the viral infection process, this tool will become an important asset in the search for efficient antiviral treatments. The tool is freely available at: http://hipathia.babelomics.org/covid19/

systems biology↗