@article{MoellerIsbilirSungkawornetal.2020, author = {M{\"o}ller, Jan and Isbilir, Ali and Sungkaworn, Titiwat and Osberg, Brenda and Karathanasis, Christos and Sunkara, Vikram and Grushevsky, Eugene O and Bock, Andreas and Annibale, Paolo and Heilemann, Mike and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof and Lohse, Martin J.}, title = {Single molecule mu-opioid receptor membrane-dynamics reveal agonist-specific dimer formation with super-resolved precision}, volume = {16}, journal = {Nature Chemical Biology}, doi = {10.1038/s41589-020-0566-1}, pages = {946 -- 954}, year = {2020}, 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} } @article{Sunkara2019, author = {Sunkara, Vikram}, title = {On the Properties of the Reaction Counts Chemical Master Equation}, volume = {21}, journal = {Entropy}, number = {6}, doi = {10.3390/e21060607}, pages = {607}, year = {2019}, abstract = {The reaction counts chemical master equation (CME) is a high-dimensional variant of the classical population counts CME. In the reaction counts CME setting, we count the reactions which have fired over time rather than monitoring the population state over time. Since a reaction either fires or not, the reaction counts CME transitions are only forward stepping. Typically there are more reactions in a system than species, this results in the reaction counts CME being higher in dimension, but simpler in dynamics. In this work, we revisit the reaction counts CME framework and its key theoretical results. Then we will extend the theory by exploiting the reactions counts' forward stepping feature, by decomposing the state space into independent continuous-time Markov chains (CTMC). We extend the reaction counts CME theory to derive analytical forms and estimates for the CTMC decomposition of the CME. This new theory gives new insights into solving hitting times-, rare events-, and a priori domain construction problems.}, language = {en} } @article{TempLabuzNegreteetal.2019, author = {Temp, Julia and Labuz, Dominika and Negrete, Roger and Sunkara, Vikram and Machelska, Halina}, title = {Pain and knee damage in male and female mice in the medial meniscal transection-induced osteoarthritis}, journal = {Osteoarthritis and Cartilage}, doi = {10.1016/j.joca.2019.11.003}, year = {2019}, language = {en} } @article{RaySunkaraSchuetteetal.2020, author = {Ray, Sourav and Sunkara, Vikram and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof and Weber, Marcus}, title = {How to calculate pH-dependent binding rates for receptor-ligand systems based on thermodynamic simulations with different binding motifs}, volume = {46}, journal = {Molecular Simulation}, number = {18}, publisher = {Taylor and Francis}, doi = {10.1080/08927022.2020.1839660}, pages = {1443 -- 1452}, year = {2020}, abstract = {Molecular simulations of ligand-receptor interactions are a computational challenge, especially when their association- ('on'-rate) and dissociation- ('off'-rate) mechanisms are working on vastly differing timescales. One way of tackling this multiscale problem is to compute the free-energy landscapes, where molecular dynamics (MD) trajectories are used to only produce certain statistical ensembles. The approach allows for deriving the transition rates between energy states as a function of the height of the activation-energy barriers. In this article, we derive the association rates of the opioids fentanyl and N-(3-fluoro-1-phenethylpiperidin-4-yl)-N-phenyl propionamide (NFEPP) in a μ-opioid receptor by combining the free-energy landscape approach with the square-root-approximation method (SQRA), which is a particularly robust version of Markov modelling. The novelty of this work is that we derive the association rates as a function of the pH level using only an ensemble of MD simulations. We also verify our MD-derived insights by reproducing the in vitro study performed by the Stein Lab.}, language = {en} } @article{WulkowKoltaiSunkaraetal.2021, author = {Wulkow, Niklas and Koltai, P{\´e}ter and Sunkara, Vikram and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof}, title = {Data-driven modelling of nonlinear dynamics by barycentric coordinates and memory}, journal = {J. Stat. Phys.}, arxiv = {http://arxiv.org/abs/2112.06742}, year = {2021}, abstract = {We present a numerical method to model dynamical systems from data. We use the recently introduced method Scalable Probabilistic Approximation (SPA) to project points from a Euclidean space to convex polytopes and represent these projected states of a system in new, lower-dimensional coordinates denoting their position in the polytope. We then introduce a specific nonlinear transformation to construct a model of the dynamics in the polytope and to transform back into the original state space. To overcome the potential loss of information from the projection to a lower-dimensional polytope, we use memory in the sense of the delay-embedding theorem of Takens. By construction, our method produces stable models. We illustrate the capacity of the method to reproduce even chaotic dynamics and attractors with multiple connected components on various examples.}, language = {en} } @article{ThiesSunkaraRayetal.2023, author = {Thies, Arne and Sunkara, Vikram and Ray, Sourav and Wulkow, Hanna and Celik, M. {\"O}zg{\"u}r and Yerg{\"o}z, Fatih and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof and Stein, Christoph and Weber, Marcus and Winkelmann, Stefanie}, title = {Modelling altered signalling of G-protein coupled receptors in inflamed environment to advance drug design}, volume = {13}, journal = {Scientific Reports}, number = {607}, doi = {10.1038/s41598-023-27699-w}, year = {2023}, abstract = {We previously reported the successful design, synthesis and testing of the prototype opioid painkiller NFEPP that does not elicit adverse side effects. The design process of NFEPP was based on mathematical modelling of extracellular interactions between G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs) and ligands, recognizing that GPCRs function differently under pathological versus healthy conditions. We now present an additional and novel stochastic model of GPCR function that includes intracellular dissociation of G-protein subunits and modulation of plasma membrane calcium channels and their dependence on parameters of inflamed and healthy tissue (pH, radicals). The model is validated against in vitro experimental data for the ligands NFEPP and fentanyl at different pH values and radical concentrations. We observe markedly reduced binding affinity and calcium channel inhibition for NFEPP at normal pH compared to lower pH, in contrast to the effect of fentanyl. For increasing radical concentrations, we find enhanced constitutive G-protein activation but reduced ligand binding affinity. Assessing the different effects, the results suggest that, compared to radicals, low pH is a more important determinant of overall GPCR function in an inflamed environment. Future drug design efforts should take this into account.}, language = {en} } @article{PeppertvonKleistSchuetteetal.2022, author = {Peppert, Felix and von Kleist, Max and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof and Sunkara, Vikram}, title = {On the Sufficient Condition for Solving the Gap-Filling Problem Using Deep Convolutional Neural Networks}, volume = {33}, journal = {IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems}, number = {11}, doi = {10.1109/TNNLS.2021.3072746}, pages = {6194 -- 6205}, year = {2022}, abstract = {Deep convolutional neural networks (DCNNs) are routinely used for image segmentation of biomedical data sets to obtain quantitative measurements of cellular structures like tissues. These cellular structures often contain gaps in their boundaries, leading to poor segmentation performance when using DCNNs like the U-Net. The gaps can usually be corrected by post-hoc computer vision (CV) steps, which are specific to the data set and require a disproportionate amount of work. As DCNNs are Universal Function Approximators, it is conceivable that the corrections should be obsolete by selecting the appropriate architecture for the DCNN. In this article, we present a novel theoretical framework for the gap-filling problem in DCNNs that allows the selection of architecture to circumvent the CV steps. Combining information-theoretic measures of the data set with a fundamental property of DCNNs, the size of their receptive field, allows us to formulate statements about the solvability of the gap-filling problem independent of the specifics of model training. In particular, we obtain mathematical proof showing that the maximum proficiency of filling a gap by a DCNN is achieved if its receptive field is larger than the gap length. We then demonstrate the consequence of this result using numerical experiments on a synthetic and real data set and compare the gap-filling ability of the ubiquitous U-Net architecture with variable depths. Our code is available at https://github.com/ai-biology/dcnn-gap-filling.}, language = {en} } @article{RaharinirinaSunkaravonKleistetal.2024, author = {Raharinirina, Nomenjanahary Alexia and Sunkara, Vikram and von Kleist, Max and Fackeldey, Konstantin and Weber, Marcus}, title = {Multi-Input data ASsembly for joint Analysis (MIASA): A framework for the joint analysis of disjoint sets of variables}, volume = {19}, journal = {PLOS ONE}, number = {5}, publisher = {Public Library of Science}, doi = {10.1371/journal.pone.0302425}, pages = {26}, year = {2024}, language = {en} } @article{VuHanSchettinoWeissetal.2024, author = {Vu-Han, Tu-Lan and Schettino, Rodrigo Bermudez and Weiß, Claudia and Perka, Carsten and Winkler, Tobias and Sunkara, Vikram and Pumberger, Matthias}, title = {An interpretable data-driven prediction model to anticipate scoliosis in spinal muscular atrophy in the era of (gene-) therapies}, volume = {14}, journal = {Scientific Reports}, number = {11838}, doi = {10.1038/s41598-024-62720-w}, year = {2024}, abstract = {5q-spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) is a neuromuscular disorder (NMD) that has become one of the first 5\% treatable rare diseases. The efficacy of new SMA therapies is creating a dynamic SMA patient landscape, where disease progression and scoliosis development play a central role, however, remain difficult to anticipate. New approaches to anticipate disease progression and associated sequelae will be needed to continuously provide these patients the best standard of care. Here we developed an interpretable machine learning (ML) model that can function as an assistive tool in the anticipation of SMA-associated scoliosis based on disease progression markers. We collected longitudinal data from 86 genetically confirmed SMA patients. We selected six features routinely assessed over time to train a random forest classifier. The model achieved a mean accuracy of 0.77 (SD 0.2) and an average ROC AUC of 0.85 (SD 0.17). For class 1 'scoliosis' the average precision was 0.84 (SD 0.11), recall 0.89 (SD 0.22), F1-score of 0.85 (SD 0.17), respectively. Our trained model could predict scoliosis using selected disease progression markers and was consistent with the radiological measurements. During post validation, the model could predict scoliosis in patients who were unseen during training. We also demonstrate that rare disease data sets can be wrangled to build predictive ML models. Interpretable ML models can function as assistive tools in a changing disease landscape and have the potential to democratize expertise that is otherwise clustered at specialized centers.}, language = {en} } @article{KostreDjurdjevacConradSchuetteetal.2024, author = {Kostr{\´e}, Margarita and Djurdjevac Conrad, Natasa and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof and Sunkara, Vikram}, title = {Exploration of Particle Swarm Optimisation Algorithm with Divergent Parameters}, journal = {Natural Computing}, year = {2024}, language = {en} } @article{Vu‐HanSunkaraBermudez‐Schettinoetal.2025, author = {Vu-Han, Tu-Lan and Sunkara, Vikram and Bermudez-Schettino, Rodrigo and Schwechten, Jakob and Runge, Robin and Perka, Carsten and Winkler, Tobias and Pokutta, Sebastian and Weiß, Claudia and Pumberger, Matthias}, title = {Feature Engineering for the Prediction of Scoliosis in 5q-Spinal Muscular Atrophy}, volume = {16}, journal = {Journal of Cachexia, Sarcopenia and Muscle}, number = {1}, doi = {10.1002/jcsm.13599}, pages = {e13599}, year = {2025}, language = {en} } @article{RegenyiMashreghiSchuetteetal.2024, author = {Reg{\´e}nyi, Enikő and Mashreghi, Mir-Farzin and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof and Sunkara, Vikram}, title = {Exploring transcription modalities from bimodal, single-cell RNA sequencing data}, volume = {6}, journal = {NAR Genomics and Bioinformatics}, number = {4}, publisher = {Oxford University Press (OUP)}, issn = {2631-9268}, doi = {10.1093/nargab/lqae179}, year = {2024}, abstract = {Abstract There is a growing interest in generating bimodal, single-cell RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) data for studying biological pathways. These data are predominantly utilized in understanding phenotypic trajectories using RNA velocities; however, the shape information encoded in the two-dimensional resolution of such data is not yet exploited. In this paper, we present an elliptical parametrization of two-dimensional RNA-seq data, from which we derived statistics that reveal four different modalities. These modalities can be interpreted as manifestations of the changes in the rates of splicing, transcription or degradation. We performed our analysis on a cell cycle and a colorectal cancer dataset. In both datasets, we found genes that are not picked up by differential gene expression analysis (DGEA), and are consequently unnoticed, yet visibly delineate phenotypes. This indicates that, in addition to DGEA, searching for genes that exhibit the discovered modalities could aid recovering genes that set phenotypes apart. For communities studying biomarkers and cellular phenotyping, the modalities present in bimodal RNA-seq data broaden the search space of genes, and furthermore, allow for incorporating cellular RNA processing into regulatory analyses.}, language = {en} } @inproceedings{ChaukairSchuetteSunkara2023, author = {Chaukair, Mustafa and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof and Sunkara, Vikram}, title = {On the Activation Space of ReLU Equipped Deep Neural Networks}, volume = {222}, booktitle = {Procedia Computer Science}, doi = {10.1016/j.procs.2023.08.200}, pages = {624 -- 635}, year = {2023}, abstract = {Modern Deep Neural Networks are getting wider and deeper in their architecture design. However, with an increasing number of parameters the decision mechanisms becomes more opaque. Therefore, there is a need for understanding the structures arising in the hidden layers of deep neural networks. In this work, we present a new mathematical framework for describing the canonical polyhedral decomposition in the input space, and in addition, we introduce the notions of collapsing- and preserving patches, pertinent to understanding the forward map and the activation space they induce. The activation space can be seen as the output of a layer and, in the particular case of ReLU activations, we prove that this output has the structure of a polyhedral complex.}, language = {en} } @article{CoomberChewleSeckeretal.2025, author = {Coomber, Celvic and Chewle, Surahit and Secker, Christopher and Fackeldey, Konstantin and Weber, Marcus and Winkelmann, Stefanie and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof and Sunkara, Vikram}, title = {Investigating Endogenous Opioids Unravels the Mechanisms Behind Opioid-Induced Constipation, a Mathematical Modeling Approach}, volume = {26}, journal = {International Journal of Molecular Sciences}, number = {13}, doi = {10.3390/ijms26136207}, year = {2025}, abstract = {Endogenous opioids, such as Endomorphin-2, are not typically associated with severe constipation, unlike pharmaceutical opioids, which induce opioid-induced constipation (OIC) by activating μ-opioid receptors in the gastrointestinal tract. In this study, we present a mathematical model, which integrates the serotonergic and opioid pathways, simulating the interaction between serotonin and opioid signaling within the enteric nervous system (ENS). The model explores the mechanisms underlying OIC, with a focus on the change in adenylyl cyclase (AC) activity, cAMP accumulation, and the distinct functionalities of Endomorphin-2 compared to commonly used pharmaceutical opioids. We study the effects of Morphine, Fentanyl, and Methadone and contrast them with Endomorphin-2. Our findings reveal that opioids do not perturb the signaling of serotonin, but only the activity of AC, suggesting that serotonin levels have no influence on improving opioid-induced constipation. Furthermore, this study reveals that the primary difference between endogenous and pharmaceutical opioids is their degradation rates. This finding shows that modulating opioid degradation rates significantly improves cAMP recovery. In conclusion, our insights steer towards exploring opioid degrading enzymes, localized to the gut, as a strategy for mitigating OIC.}, language = {en} } @article{RaharinirinaPeppertvonKleistetal.2021, author = {Raharinirina, Alexia N. and Peppert, Felix and von Kleist, Max and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof and Sunkara, Vikram}, title = {Inferring gene regulatory networks from single-cell RNA-seq temporal snapshot data requires higher-order moments}, volume = {2}, journal = {Patterns}, number = {9}, doi = {10.1016/j.patter.2021.100332}, year = {2021}, abstract = {Single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) has become ubiquitous in biology. Recently, there has been a push for using scRNA-seq snapshot data to infer the underlying gene regulatory networks (GRNs) steering cellular function. To date, this aspiration remains unrealized due to technical and computational challenges. In this work we focus on the latter, which is under-represented in the literature. We took a systemic approach by subdividing the GRN inference into three fundamental components: data pre-processing, feature extraction, and inference. We observed that the regulatory signature is captured in the statistical moments of scRNA-seq data and requires computationally intensive minimization solvers to extract it. Furthermore, current data pre-processing might not conserve these statistical moments. Although our moment-based approach is a didactic tool for understanding the different compartments of GRN inference, this line of thinking—finding computationally feasible multi-dimensional statistics of data—is imperative for designing GRN inference methods.}, language = {en} } @article{SunkaraHeinzHeinrichetal.2021, author = {Sunkara, Vikram and Heinz, Gitta A. and Heinrich, Frederik F. and Durek, Pawel and Mobasheri, Ali and Mashreghi, Mir-Farzin and Lang, Annemarie}, title = {Combining segmental bulk- and single-cell RNA-sequencing to define the chondrocyte gene expression signature in the murine knee joint}, volume = {29}, journal = {Osteoarthritis and Cartilage}, number = {6}, doi = {10.1016/j.joca.2021.03.007}, pages = {905 -- 914}, year = {2021}, language = {en} } @article{SunkaraHeinzHeinrichetal.2020, author = {Sunkara, Vikram and Heinz, Gitta A. and Heinrich, Frederik F. and Durek, Pawel and Mobasheri, Ali and Mashreghi, Mir-Farzin and Lang, Annemarie}, title = {Combining segmental bulk- and single-cell RNA-sequencing to define the chondrocyte gene expression signature in the murine knee joint}, journal = {bioarxiv (Accepted in Osteoarthr. Cartil.)}, doi = {10.1101/2020.06.13.148056}, year = {2020}, language = {en} } @article{LangHelfmeierStefanowskietal.2020, author = {Lang, Annemarie and Helfmeier, Sarah and Stefanowski, Jonathan and Kuppe, Aditi and Sunkara, Vikram and Pfeiffenberger, Moritz and Wolter, Angelique and Damerau, Alexandra and Hemmati-Sadeghi, Shabnam and Ringe, Jochen and Haag, Rainer and Hauser, Anja E. and L{\"o}hning, Max and Perka, Carsten and Duda, Georg and Hoff, Paula and Schmidt-Bleek, Katharina and Gaber, Timo and Buttgereit, Frank}, title = {HIF-stabilization prevents delayed fracture healing}, journal = {bioarxiv}, doi = {10.1101/2020.07.02.182832}, year = {2020}, language = {en} } @article{LaydonSunkaraBoelenetal.2020, author = {Laydon, Daniel J. and Sunkara, Vikram and Boelen, Lies and Bangham, Charles R. M. and Asquith, Becca}, title = {The relative contributions of infectious and mitotic spread to HTLV-1 persistence}, journal = {PLOS Computational Biology}, doi = {10.1371/journal.pcbi.1007470}, year = {2020}, language = {en} }