@misc{WinkelmannSchuettevonKleist2013, author = {Winkelmann, Stefanie and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof and von Kleist, Max}, title = {Markov Control Processes with Rare State Observation: Theory and Application to Treatment Scheduling in HIV-1}, issn = {1438-0064}, doi = {10.4310/CMS.2014.v12.n5.a4}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-41955}, year = {2013}, abstract = {Markov Decision Processes (MDP) or Partially Observable MDPs (POMDP) are used for modelling situations in which the evolution of a process is partly random and partly controllable. These MDP theories allow for computing the optimal control policy for processes that can continuously or frequently be observed, even if only partially. However, they cannot be applied if state observation is very costly and therefore rare (in time). We present a novel MDP theory for rare, costly observations and derive the corresponding Bellman equation. In the new theory, state information can be derived for a particular cost after certain, rather long time intervals. The resulting information costs enter into the total cost and thus into the optimization criterion. This approach applies to many real world problems, particularly in the medical context, where the medical condition is examined rather rarely because examination costs are high. At the same time, the approach allows for efficient numerical realization. We demonstrate the usefulness of the novel theory by determining, from the national economic perspective, optimal therapeutic policies for the treatment of the human immunodefficiency virus (HIV) in resource-rich and resource-poor settings. Based on the developed theory and models, we discover that available drugs may not be utilized efficiently in resource-poor settings due to exorbitant diagnostic costs.}, language = {en} } @article{RettigHaasePletnyovetal.2019, author = {Rettig, Anika and Haase, Tobias and Pletnyov, Alexandr and Kohl, Benjamin and Ertel, Wolfgang and von Kleist, Max and Sunkara, Vikram}, title = {SLCV - A Supervised Learning - Computer Vision combined strategy for automated muscle fibre detection in cross sectional images}, journal = {PeerJ}, publisher = {PeerJ}, address = {PeerJ}, doi = {10.7717/peerj.7053}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-72639}, year = {2019}, abstract = {Muscle fibre cross sectional area (CSA) is an important biomedical measure used to determine the structural composition of skeletal muscle, and it is relevant for tackling research questions in many different fields of research. To date, time consuming and tedious manual delineation of muscle fibres is often used to determine the CSA. Few methods are able to automatically detect muscle fibres in muscle fibre cross sections to quantify CSA due to challenges posed by variation of bright- ness and noise in the staining images. In this paper, we introduce SLCV, a robust semi-automatic pipeline for muscle fibre detection, which combines supervised learning (SL) with computer vision (CV). SLCV is adaptable to different staining methods and is quickly and intuitively tunable by the user. We are the first to perform an error analysis with respect to cell count and area, based on which we compare SLCV to the best purely CV-based pipeline in order to identify the contribution of SL and CV steps to muscle fibre detection. Our results obtained on 27 fluorescence-stained cross sectional images of varying staining quality suggest that combining SL and CV performs signifi- cantly better than both SL based and CV based methods with regards to both the cell separation- and the area reconstruction error. Furthermore, applying SLCV to our test set images yielded fibre detection results of very high quality, with average sensitivity values of 0.93 or higher on different cluster sizes and an average Dice Similarity Coefficient (DSC) of 0.9778.}, language = {en} } @article{OzelKulkarniHasanetal.2019, author = {Ozel, Mehmet Neset and Kulkarni, Abhishek and Hasan, Amr and Brummer, Josephine and Moldenhauer, Marian and Daumann, Ilsa-Maria and Wolfenberg, Heike and Dercksen, Vincent J. and Kiral, Ferdi Ridvan and Weiser, Martin and Prohaska, Steffen and von Kleist, Max and Hiesinger, Peter Robin}, title = {Serial synapse formation through filopodial competition for synaptic seeding factors}, volume = {50}, journal = {Developmental Cell}, number = {4}, doi = {10.1016/j.devcel.2019.06.014}, pages = {447 -- 461}, year = {2019}, abstract = {Following axon pathfinding, growth cones transition from stochastic filopodial exploration to the formation of a limited number of synapses. How the interplay of filopodia and synapse assembly ensures robust connectivity in the brain has remained a challenging problem. Here, we developed a new 4D analysis method for filopodial dynamics and a data-driven computational model of synapse formation for R7 photoreceptor axons in developing Drosophila brains. Our live data support a 'serial synapse formation' model, where at any time point only a single 'synaptogenic' filopodium suppresses the synaptic competence of other filopodia through competition for synaptic seeding factors. Loss of the synaptic seeding factors Syd-1 and Liprin-α leads to a loss of this suppression, filopodial destabilization and reduced synapse formation, which is sufficient to cause the destabilization of entire axon terminals. Our model provides a filopodial 'winner-takes-all' mechanism that ensures the formation of an appropriate number of synapses.}, language = {en} } @article{GuptaPeterJungetal.2019, author = {Gupta, Pooja and Peter, Sarah and Jung, Markus and Lewin, Astrid and Hemmrich-Stanisak, Georg and Franke, Andre and von Kleist, Max and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof and Einspanier, Ralf and Sharbati, Soroush and zur Bruegge, Jennifer}, title = {Analysis of long non-coding RNA and mRNA expression in bovine macrophages brings up novel 2 aspects of Mycobacterium avium subspecies paratuberculosis infections}, volume = {9}, journal = {Scientific Reports in Nature}, doi = {10.1038/s41598-018-38141-x}, year = {2019}, abstract = {Paratuberculosis is a major disease in cattle that severely affects animal welfare and causes huge economic losses worldwide. Development of alternative diagnostic methods is of urgent need to control the disease. Recent studies suggest that long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) play a crucial role in regulating immune function and may confer valuable information about the disease. However, their role has not yet been investigated in cattle with respect to infection towards Paratuberculosis. Therefore, we investigated the alteration in genomic expression profiles of mRNA and lncRNA in bovine macrophages in response to Paratuberculosis infection using RNA-Seq. We identified 397 potentially novel lncRNA candidates in macrophages of which 38 were differentially regulated by the infection. A total of 820 coding genes were also significantly altered by the infection. Co-expression analysis of lncRNAs and their neighbouring coding genes suggest regulatory functions of lncRNAs in pathways related to immune response. For example, this included protein coding genes such as TNIP3, TNFAIP3 and NF-κB2 that play a role in NF-κB2 signalling, a pathway associated with immune response. This study advances our understanding of lncRNA roles during Paratuberculosis infection.}, language = {en} } @article{DuwalWinkelmannSchuetteetal.2015, author = {Duwal, Sulav and Winkelmann, Stefanie and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof and von Kleist, Max}, title = {Optimal Treatment Strategies in the Context of 'Treatment for Prevention' against HIV/1 in Resource-Poor Settings}, volume = {11}, journal = {PloS Computational Biology}, number = {4}, doi = {10.1371/journal.pcbi.1004200}, year = {2015}, abstract = {An estimated 2.7 million new HIV-1 infections occurred in 2010. `Treatment-for-prevention' may strongly prevent HIV-1 transmission. The basic idea is that immediate treatment initiation rapidly decreases virus burden, which reduces the number of transmittable viruses and thereby the probability of infection. However, HIV inevitably develops drug resistance, which leads to virus rebound and nullifies the effect of `treatment-for-prevention' for the time it remains unrecognized. While timely conducted treatment changes may avert periods of viral rebound, necessary treatment options and diagnostics may be lacking in resource-constrained settings. Within this work, we provide a mathematical platform for comparing different treatment paradigms that can be applied to many medical phenomena. We use this platform to optimize two distinct approaches for the treatment of HIV-1: (i) a diagnostic-guided treatment strategy, based on infrequent and patient-specific diagnostic schedules and (ii) a pro-active strategy that allows treatment adaptation prior to diagnostic ascertainment. Both strategies are compared to current clinical protocols (standard of care and the HPTN052 protocol) in terms of patient health, economic means and reduction in HIV-1 onward transmission exemplarily for South Africa. All therapeutic strategies are assessed using a coarse-grained stochastic model of within-host HIV dynamics and pseudo-codes for solving the respective optimal control problems are provided. Our mathematical model suggests that both optimal strategies (i)-(ii) perform better than the current clinical protocols and no treatment in terms of economic means, life prolongation and reduction of HIV-transmission. The optimal diagnostic-guided strategy suggests rare diagnostics and performs similar to the optimal pro-active strategy. Our results suggest that 'treatment-for-prevention' may be further improved using either of the two analyzed treatment paradigms.}, language = {en} } @article{DuwalSchuettevonKleist2012, author = {Duwal, Sulav and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof and von Kleist, Max}, title = {Pharmacokinetics and Pharmacodynamics of the Reverse Transcriptase Inhibitor Tenofovir \& Prophylactic Efficacy against HIV-1 Infection.}, volume = {7}, journal = {PLoS One}, number = {7}, doi = {10.1371/journal.pone.0040382}, pages = {e40382}, year = {2012}, language = {en} } @article{vonKleistMetznerMarquetetal.2012, author = {von Kleist, Max and Metzner, Ph. and Marquet, R. and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof}, title = {Polymerase Inhibition by Nucleoside Analogs}, volume = {8}, journal = {Plos Computational Biology}, number = {1}, doi = {10.1371/journal.pcbi.1002359}, pages = {e1002359}, year = {2012}, language = {en} } @article{vonKleistMenzStockeretal.2011, author = {von Kleist, Max and Menz, Stephan and Stocker, Hartmut and Arasteh, Keikawus and Huisinga, Wilhelm and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof}, title = {HIV Quasispecies Dynamics during Pro-active Treatment Switching}, volume = {6}, journal = {Plos One}, number = {3}, publisher = {Public Library of Science}, doi = {10.1371/journal.pone.0018204}, pages = {e18204}, year = {2011}, language = {en} } @article{FrankvonKleistKunzetal.2011, author = {Frank, M. and von Kleist, Max and Kunz, A. and Harms, G. and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof and Kloft, Ch.}, title = {Quantifying the impact of nevirapine-based prophylaxis strategies to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV-1}, volume = {55}, journal = {Antimicrob. Agents Chemother.}, number = {12}, pages = {5529 -- 5540}, year = {2011}, language = {en} } @article{RathYousefKatzensteinetal.2013, author = {Rath, Barbara and Yousef, Kaveh and Katzenstein, D. and Shafer, R. and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof and von Kleist, Max and Merigan, T.}, title = {HIV-1 Evolution in Response to Triple Reverse Transcriptase Inhibitor Induced Selective Pressure in vitro}, volume = {8}, journal = {PLoS ONE}, number = {4}, publisher = {Public Library of Science}, doi = {10.1371/journal.pone.0061102}, pages = {e61102}, year = {2013}, language = {en} } @article{WinkelmannSchuettevonKleist2012, author = {Winkelmann, Stefanie and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof and von Kleist, Max}, title = {Markov Control Processes with Rare State Observation}, volume = {12}, journal = {Communications in Mathematical Sciences}, number = {859}, year = {2012}, language = {en} } @article{WinkelmannSchuettevonKleist2012, author = {Winkelmann, Stefanie and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof and von Kleist, Max}, title = {Markov Control with Rare State Observation}, journal = {International Journal of Biomathematics and Biostatistics}, year = {2012}, language = {en} } @article{HaaseSunkaraKohletal.2019, author = {Haase, Tobias and Sunkara, Vikram and Kohl, Benjamin and Meier, Carola and Bußmann, Patricia and Becker, Jessica and Jagielski, Michal and von Kleist, Max and Ertel, Wolfgang}, title = {Discerning the spatio-temporal disease patterns of surgically induced OA mouse models}, volume = {14}, journal = {PLOS One}, number = {4}, publisher = {PLOS One}, doi = {10.1371/journal.pone.0213734}, year = {2019}, abstract = {Osteoarthritis (OA) is the most common cause of disability in ageing societies, with no effective therapies available to date. Two preclinical models are widely used to validate novel OA interventions (MCL-MM and DMM). Our aim is to discern disease dynamics in these models to provide a clear timeline in which various pathological changes occur. OA was surgically induced in mice by destabilisation of the medial meniscus. Analysis of OA progression revealed that the intensity and duration of chondrocyte loss and cartilage lesion formation were significantly different in MCL-MM vs DMM. Firstly, apoptosis was seen prior to week two and was narrowly restricted to the weight bearing area. Four weeks post injury the magnitude of apoptosis led to a 40-60\% reduction of chondrocytes in the non-calcified zone. Secondly, the progression of cell loss preceded the structural changes of the cartilage spatio-temporally. Lastly, while proteoglycan loss was similar in both models, collagen type II degradation only occurred more prominently in MCL-MM. Dynamics of chondrocyte loss and lesion formation in preclinical models has important implications for validating new therapeutic strategies. Our work could be helpful in assessing the feasibility and expected response of the DMM- and the MCL-MM models to chondrocyte mediated therapies.}, language = {en} } @misc{SunkaraRaharinirinaPeppertetal.2020, author = {Sunkara, Vikram and Raharinirina, N. Alexia and Peppert, Felix and von Kleist, Max and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof}, title = {Inferring Gene Regulatory Networks from Single Cell RNA-seq Temporal Snapshot Data Requires Higher Order Moments}, issn = {1438-0064}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-79664}, year = {2020}, abstract = {Due to the increase in accessibility and robustness of sequencing technology, single cell RNA-seq (scRNA-seq) data has become abundant. The technology has made significant contributions to discovering novel phenotypes and heterogeneities of cells. Recently, there has been a push for using single-- or multiple scRNA-seq snapshots to infer the underlying gene regulatory networks (GRNs) steering the cells' biological functions. To date, this aspiration remains unrealised. In this paper, we took a bottom-up approach and curated a stochastic two gene interaction model capturing the dynamics of a complete system of genes, mRNAs, and proteins. In the model, the regulation was placed upstream from the mRNA on the gene level. We then inferred the underlying regulatory interactions from only the observation of the mRNA population through~time. We could detect signatures of the regulation by combining information of the mean, covariance, and the skewness of the mRNA counts through time. We also saw that reordering the observations using pseudo-time did not conserve the covariance and skewness of the true time course. The underlying GRN could be captured consistently when we fitted the moments up to degree three; however, this required a computationally expensive non-linear least squares minimisation solver. There are still major numerical challenges to overcome for inference of GRNs from scRNA-seq data. These challenges entail finding informative summary statistics of the data which capture the critical regulatory information. Furthermore, the statistics have to evolve linearly or piece-wise linearly through time to achieve computational feasibility and scalability.}, language = {en} } @misc{OezelKulkarniHasanetal.2019, author = {{\"O}zel, M. Neset and Kulkarni, Abhishek and Hasan, Amr and Brummer, Josephine and Moldenhauer, Marian and Daumann, Ilsa-Maria and Wolfenberg, Heike and Dercksen, Vincent J. and Kiral, F. Ridvan and Weiser, Martin and Prohaska, Steffen and von Kleist, Max and Hiesinger, Peter Robin}, title = {Serial synapse formation through filopodial competition for synaptic seeding factors}, issn = {1438-0064}, doi = {10.1016/j.devcel.2019.06.014}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-74397}, year = {2019}, abstract = {Following axon pathfinding, growth cones transition from stochastic filopodial exploration to the formation of a limited number of synapses. How the interplay of filopodia and synapse assembly ensures robust connectivity in the brain has remained a challenging problem. Here, we developed a new 4D analysis method for filopodial dynamics and a data-driven computational model of synapse formation for R7 photoreceptor axons in developing Drosophila brains. Our live data support a 'serial synapse formation' model, where at any time point only a single 'synaptogenic' filopodium suppresses the synaptic competence of other filopodia through competition for synaptic seeding factors. Loss of the synaptic seeding factors Syd-1 and Liprin-α leads to a loss of this suppression, filopodial destabilization and reduced synapse formation, which is sufficient to cause the destabilization of entire axon terminals. Our model provides a filopodial 'winner-takes-all' mechanism that ensures the formation of an appropriate number of synapses.}, language = {en} } @article{WangSchuetteCiccottietal.2014, author = {Wang, Han and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof and Ciccotti, Giovanni and von Kleist, Max}, title = {Exploring the conformational dynamics of alanine dipeptide in solution subjected to an external electric field: A nonequilibrium molecular dynamics simulation}, volume = {10}, journal = {Journal of Chemical Theory and Computation}, number = {4}, doi = {10.1021/ct400993e}, pages = {1376 -- 1386}, year = {2014}, abstract = {In this paper, we investigate the conformational dynamics of alanine dipeptide under an external electric field by nonequilibrium molecular dynamics simulation. We consider the case of a constant and of an oscillatory field. In this context, we propose a procedure to implement the temperature control, which removes the irrelevant thermal effects of the field. For the constant field different time-scales are identified in the conformational, dipole moment, and orientational dynamics. Moreover, we prove that the solvent structure only marginally changes when the external field is switched on. In the case of oscillatory field, the conformational changes are shown to be as strong as in the previous case, and nontrivial nonequilibrium circular paths in the conformation space are revealed by calculating the integrated net probability fluxes.}, language = {en} }