@misc{FischerCordesSchuette1997, author = {Fischer, Alexander and Cordes, Frank and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof}, title = {Hybrid Monte Carlo with Adaptive Temperature in a Mixed-Canonical Ensemble: Efficient Conformational Analysis of RNA}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-3364}, number = {SC-97-67}, year = {1997}, abstract = {A hybrid Monte Carlo method with adaptive temperature choice is presented, which exactly generates the distribution of a mixed-canonical ensemble composed of two canonical ensembles at low and high temperature. The analysis of resulting Markov chains with the reweighting technique shows an efficient sampling of the canonical distribution at low temperature, whereas the high temperature component facilitates conformational transitions, which allows shorter simulation times. \\The algorithm was tested by comparing analytical and numerical results for the small n-butane molecule before simulations were performed for a triribonucleotide. Sampling the complex multi-minima energy landscape of these small RNA segments, we observed enforced crossing of energy barriers.}, language = {en} } @misc{HuisingaBestCordesetal.1998, author = {Huisinga, Wilhelm and Best, Christoph and Cordes, Frank and Roitzsch, Rainer and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof}, title = {From Simulation Data to Conformational Ensembles: Structure and Dynamics based Methods}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-3797}, number = {SC-98-36}, year = {1998}, abstract = {Statistical methods for analyzing large data sets of molecular configurations within the chemical concept of molecular conformations are described. The strategies are based on dependencies between configurations of a molecular ensemble; the article concentrates on dependencies induces by a) correlations between the molecular degrees of freedom, b) geometrical similarities of configurations, and c) dynamical relations between subsets of configurations. The statistical technique realizing aspect a) is based on an approach suggested by {\sc Amadei et al.} (Proteins, 17 (1993)). It allows to identify essential degrees of freedom of a molecular system and is extended in order to determine single configurations as representatives for the crucial features related to these essential degrees of freedom. Aspects b) and c) are based on statistical cluster methods. They lead to a decomposition of the available simulation data into {\em conformational ensembles} or {\em subsets} with the property that all configurations in one of these subsets share a common chemical property. In contrast to the restriction to single representative conformations, conformational ensembles include information about, e.g., structural flexibility or dynamical connectivity. The conceptual similarities and differences of the three approaches are discussed in detail and are illustrated by application to simulation data originating from a hybrid Monte Carlo sampling of a triribonucleotide.}, language = {en} } @article{ZimperDjurdjevacHartmannetal.2025, author = {Zimper, Sebastian and Djurdjevac, Ana and Hartmann, Carsten and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof and Conrad, Natasa Djurdjevac}, title = {Mean-field optimal control with stochastic leaders}, arxiv = {http://arxiv.org/abs/2512.19201}, year = {2025}, abstract = {We consider interacting agent systems with a large number of stochastic agents (or particles) influenced by a fixed number of external stochastic lead agents. Such examples arise, for example in models of opinion dynamics, where a small number of leaders (influencers) can steer the behaviour of a large population of followers. In this context, we study a partial mean-field limit where the number of followers tends to infinity, while the number of leaders stays constant. The partial mean-field limit dynamics is then given by a McKean-Vlasov stochastic differential equation (SDE) for the followers, coupled to a controlled It{\^o}-SDE governing the dynamics of the lead agents. For a given cost functional that the lead agents seek to minimise, we show that the unique optimal control of the finite agent system convergences to the optimal control of the limiting system. This establishes that the low-dimensional control of the partial (mean-field) system provides an effective approximation for controlling the high-dimensional finite agent system. In addition, we propose a stochastic gradient descent algorithm that can efficiently approximate the mean-field control. Our theoretical results are illustrated on opinion dynamics model with lead agents, where the control objective is to drive the followers to reach consensus in finite time.}, language = {en} } @article{HartmannJoesterSchuetteetal.2026, author = {Hartmann, Carsten and J{\"o}ster, Annika and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof and Sikorski, Alexander and Weber, Marcus}, title = {Importance sampling of unbounded random stopping times: computing committor functions and exit rates without reweighting}, arxiv = {http://arxiv.org/abs/2601.01489}, year = {2026}, abstract = {Rare events in molecular dynamics are often related to noise-induced transitions between different macroscopic states (e.g., in protein folding). A common feature of these rare transitions is that they happen on timescales that are on average exponentially long compared to the characteristic timescale of the system, with waiting time distributions that have (sub)exponential tails and infinite support. As a result, sampling such rare events can lead to trajectories that can be become arbitrarily long, with not too low probability, which makes the reweighting of such trajectories a real challenge. Here, we discuss rare event simulation by importance sampling from a variational perspective, with a focus on applications in molecular dynamics, in particular the computation of committor functions. The idea is to design importance sampling schemes that (a) reduce the variance of a rare event estimator while controlling the average length of the trajectories and (b) that do not require the reweighting of possibly very long trajectories. In doing so, we study different stochastic control formulations for committor and mean first exit times, which we compare both from a theoretical and a computational point of view, including numerical studies of some benchmark examples.}, language = {en} } @misc{DeuflhardSchuette2003, author = {Deuflhard, Peter and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof}, title = {Molecular Conformation Dynamics and Computational Drug Design}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-7427}, number = {03-20}, year = {2003}, abstract = {The paper surveys recent progress in the mathematical modelling and simulation of essential molecular dynamics. Particular emphasis is put on computational drug design wherein time scales of \$msec\$ up to \$min\$ play the dominant role. Classical long-term molecular dynamics computations, however, would run into ill-conditioned initial value problems already after time spans of only \$psec=10^{-12} sec\$. Therefore, in order to obtain results for times of pharmaceutical interest, a combined deterministic-stochastic model is needed. The concept advocated in this paper is the direct identification of metastable conformations together with their life times and their transition patterns. It can be interpreted as a {\em transfer operator} approach corresponding to some underlying hybrid Monte Carlo process, wherein short-term trajectories enter. Once this operator has been discretized, which is a hard problem of its own, a stochastic matrix arises. This matrix is then treated by {\em Perron cluster analysis}, a recently developed cluster analysis method involving the numerical solution of an eigenproblem for a Perron cluster of eigenvalues. In order to avoid the 'curse of dimension', the construction of appropriate boxes for the spatial discretization of the Markov operator requires careful consideration. As a biomolecular example we present a rather recent SARS protease inhibitor.}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Schuette1994, author = {Sch{\"u}tte, Christof}, title = {A Quasiresonant Smoothing Algorithm for Solving Large Highly Differential Equations from Quantum Chemistry.}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-5090}, number = {TR-94-04}, year = {1994}, abstract = {In Quantum Chemistry the field of Laser--Assisted Molecular Control'' has received a considerable amount of attention recently. One key problem in this new field is the simulation of the dynamical reaction of a molecule subjected to external radiation. This problem is described by the Schr{\"o}dinger equation, which, after eigenfunction expansion, can be written in the form of a large system of ordinary differential equations, the solutions of which show a highly oscillatory behaviour. The oscillations with high frequencies and small amplitudes confine the stepsizes of any numerical integrator -- an effect, which, in turn, blows up the simulation time. Larger stepsizes can be expected by averaging these fast oscillations, thus smoothing the trajectories. Standard smoothing techniques (averaging, filtering) would kill the whole process and thus, lead to wrong numerical results. To avoid this unwanted effect and nevertheless speed up computations, this paper presents a quasiresonant smoothing algorithm (QRS). In QRS, a natural splitting parameter \$\delta\$ controls the smoothing properties. An adaptive QRS--version (AQRS) is presented which includes an error estimation scheme for choosing this parameter \$\delta\$ in order to meet a given accuracy requirement. In AQRS \$\delta\$ is permanently adapted to the solution properties for computing the chemically necessary information'' only. The performance of AQRS is demonstrated in several test problems from the field Laser--Assisted Selective Excitation of Molecules'' in which the external radiation is a picosecond laser pulse. In comparison with standard methods speedup factors of the order of \$10^2\$ are observed.}, language = {en} } @misc{SchuetteHuisinga1999, author = {Sch{\"u}tte, Christof and Huisinga, Wilhelm}, title = {On Conformational Dynamics induced by Langevin Processes}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-4130}, number = {SC-99-25}, year = {1999}, abstract = {The function of many important biomolecules is related to their dynamic properties and their ability to switch between different {\em conformations}, which are understood as {\em almost invariant} or {\em metastable} subsets of the positional state space of the system. Recently, the present authors and their coworkers presented a novel algorithmic scheme for the direct numerical determination of such metastable subsets and the transition probability between them. Although being different in most aspects, this method exploits the same basic idea as {\sc Dellnitz} and {\sc Junge} in their approach to almost invariance in discrete dynamical systems: the almost invariant sets are computed via certain eigenvectors of the Markov operators associated with the dynamical behavior. In the present article we analyze the application of this approach to (high--friction) Langevin models describing the dynamical behavior of molecular systems coupled to a heat bath. We will see that this can be related to theoretical results for (symmetric) semigroups of Markov operators going back to {\sc Davies}. We concentrate on a comparison of our approach in respect to random perturbations of dynamical systems.}, language = {en} } @misc{Schuette1999, author = {Sch{\"u}tte, Christof}, title = {Partial Wigner Transforms and the Quantum--Classical Liouville Equation}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-3983}, number = {SC-99-10}, year = {1999}, abstract = {In molecular dynamics applications there is a growing interest in mixed quantum-classical models. The {\em quantum-classical Liouville equation} (QCL) describes most atoms of the molecular system under consideration by means of classical phase space density but an important, small portion of the system by means of quantum mechanics. The QCL is derived from the full quantum dynamical (QD) description by applying the Wigner transform to the classical part'' of the system only. We discuss the conditions under which the QCL model approximates the full QD evolution of the system. First, analysis of the asymptotic properties of the Wigner transform shows that solving the QCL yields a first order approximation of full quantum dynamics. Second, we discuss the adiabatic limit of the QCL. This discussion shows that the QCL solutions may be interpretated as classical phase space densities, at least near the adiabatic limit. Third, it is demonstrated that the QCL yields good approximations of {\em non-adiabatic quantum effects,} especially near so-called {\em avoided crossings} where most quantum-classical models fail.}, language = {en} } @misc{SchuetteHuisingaDeuflhard1999, author = {Sch{\"u}tte, Christof and Huisinga, Wilhelm and Deuflhard, Peter}, title = {Transfer Operator Approach to Conformational Dynamics in Biomolecular Systems}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-4247}, number = {SC-99-36}, year = {1999}, abstract = {The article surveys the development of novel mathematical concepts and algorithmic approaches based thereon in view of their possible applicability to biomolecular design. Both a first deterministic approach, based on the Frobenius-Perron operator corresponding to the flow of the Hamiltonian dynamics, and later stochastic approaches, based on a spatial Markov operator or on Langevin dynamics, can be subsumed under the unified mathematical roof of the transfer operator approach to effective dynamics of molecular systems. The key idea of constructing specific transfer operators especially taylored for the purpose of conformational dynamics appears as the red line throughout the paper. Different steps of the algorithm are exemplified by a trinucleotide molecular system as a small representative of possible RNA drug molecules.}, language = {en} } @misc{DeuflhardHuisingaFischeretal.1998, author = {Deuflhard, Peter and Huisinga, Wilhelm and Fischer, Alexander and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof}, title = {Identification of Almost Invariant Aggregates in Reversible Nearly Uncoupled Markov Chains}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-3469}, number = {SC-98-03}, year = {1998}, abstract = {The topic of the present paper bas been motivated by a recent computational approach to identify chemical conformations and conformational changes within molecular systems. After proper discretization, the conformations show up as almost invariant aggregates in reversible nearly uncoupled Markov chains. Most of the former work on this subject treated the direct problem: given the aggregates, analyze the loose coupling in connection with the computation of the stationary distribution (aggregation/disaggregation techniques). In contrast to that the present paper focuses on the inverse problem: given the system as a whole, identify the almost invariant aggregates together with the associated transition probabilites. A rather simple and robust algorithm is suggested and illustrated by its application to the n-pentane molecule.}, language = {en} } @misc{SchuetteFischerHuisingaetal.1998, author = {Sch{\"u}tte, Christof and Fischer, Alexander and Huisinga, Wilhelm and Deuflhard, Peter}, title = {A Hybrid Monte Carlo Method for Essential Molecular Dynamics}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-3474}, number = {SC-98-04}, year = {1998}, abstract = {Recently, a novel concept for the computation of essential features of Hamiltonian systems (such as those arising in molecular dynamics) has been proposed. The realization of that concept was based on subdivision techniques applied to the Frobenius--Perron operator for the dynamical system. The present paper suggests an alternative but related concept based on statistical mechanics, which allows to attack realistic molecular systems. In a first step, the frequency of conformational changes is characterized in statistical terms leading to the definition of some Markov operator \$T\$ that describes the corresponding transition probabilities within the canonical ensemble. In a second step, a discretization of \$T\$ via hybrid Monte Carlo techniques (based on short term subtrajectories only) is shown to lead to a stochastic matrix \$P\$. With these theoretical preparations, an identification algorithm for conformations is applicable (to be presented elsewhere). Numerical results for the n-pentane molecule are given and interpreted.}, language = {en} } @misc{WangHartmannSchuette2013, author = {Wang, Han and Hartmann, Carsten and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof}, title = {Linear response theory and optimal control for a molecular system under nonequilibrium conditions}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-18944}, year = {2013}, abstract = {In this paper, we propose a straightforward generalization of linear response theory to systems in nonequilibrium that are subject to nonequilibrium driving. We briefly revisit the standard linear response result for equilibrium systems, where we consider Langevin dynamics as a special case, and then give an alternative derivation using a change-of-measure argument that does not rely on any stationarity or reversibility assumption. This procedure moreover easily enables us to calculate the second order correction to the linear response formula (which may or may not be useful in practice). Furthermore, we outline how the novel nonequilibirum linear response formula can be used to compute optimal controls of molecular systems for cases in which one wants to steer the system to maximize a certain target expectation value. We illustrate our approach with simple numerical examples.}, language = {en} } @inproceedings{DeuflhardSchuette2004, author = {Deuflhard, Peter and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof}, title = {Molecular Conformation Dynamics and Computational Drug Design}, booktitle = {Applied Mathematics Entering the 21st Century}, number = {116}, editor = {Hill, James and Moore, Ross}, publisher = {SIAM}, pages = {91 -- 119}, year = {2004}, language = {en} } @misc{DeuflhardSchuetteCordesetal.1999, author = {Deuflhard, Peter and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof and Cordes, Frank and M{\"u}ller-Kurth, L.}, title = {Konformationsdynamik. Mathematischer Entwurf hochspezifischer Biomolek{\"u}le}, publisher = {In: D. H{\"o}mberg (ed.), 8. Veranstaltungsreihe Forschungspolitische Dialoge in Berlin: Angewandte Mathematik - die verborgene Schl{\"u}sseltechnologie, 30. April 1999, Konrad-Zuse-Zentrum Berlin, pp. 30-34}, year = {1999}, language = {en} } @incollection{DeuflhardDellnitzJungeetal.1998, author = {Deuflhard, Peter and Dellnitz, M. and Junge, Oliver and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof}, title = {Computation of essential molecular dynamics by subdivision techniques}, volume = {4}, booktitle = {Computational molecular dynamics}, editor = {Deuflhard, Peter}, publisher = {Berlin: Springer.}, pages = {98 -- 115}, year = {1998}, language = {en} } @article{DeuflhardHuisingaFischeretal.2000, author = {Deuflhard, Peter and Huisinga, Wilhelm and Fischer, Alexander and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof}, title = {Identification of Almost Invariant Aggregates in Reversible Nearly Uncoupled Markov Chains}, volume = {315}, journal = {Lin. Alg. Appl.}, pages = {39 -- 59}, year = {2000}, language = {en} } @misc{HorenkoSchmidtEhrenbergSchuette2006, author = {Horenko, Illia and Schmidt-Ehrenberg, Johannes and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof}, title = {Set-oriented dimension reduction: Localizing principal component analysis via hidden Markov models}, volume = {4216}, journal = {Computational Life Sciences II}, publisher = {Springer}, pages = {98 -- 115}, year = {2006}, language = {en} } @misc{WillenbockelSchuette2015, author = {Willenbockel, Christian Tobias and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof}, title = {A Variational Bayesian Algorithm for Clustering of Large and Complex Networks}, issn = {1438-0064}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-54588}, year = {2015}, abstract = {We propose the Blockloading algorithm for the clustering of large and complex graphs with tens of thousands of vertices according to a Stochastic Block Model (SBM). Blockloading is based on generalized Variational Bayesian EM (VBEM) schemes and works for weighted and unweighted graphs. Existing Variational (Bayesian) EM methods have to consider each possible number of clusters sepa- rately to determine the optimal number of clusters and are prone to converge to local optima making multiple restarts necessary. These factors impose a severe restriction on the size and complexity of graphs these methods can handle. In con- trast, the Blockloading algorithm restricts restarts to subnetworks in a way that provides error correction of an existing cluster assignment. The number of clusters need not be specified in advance because Blockloading will return it as a result. We show that Blockloading outperforms all other variational methods regarding reliability of the results and computational efficiency.}, language = {en} } @article{BanischDjurdjevacConradSchuette2015, author = {Banisch, Ralf and Djurdjevac Conrad, Natasa and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof}, title = {Reactive flows and unproductive cycles for random walks on complex networks}, journal = {The European Physical Journal Special Topics, vol. 224, iss. 12 (2015) pp. 2369-2387}, doi = {10.1140/epjst/e2015-02417-8}, year = {2015}, language = {en} } @misc{DjurdjevacConradWeberSchuette2015, author = {Djurdjevac Conrad, Natasa and Weber, Marcus and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof}, title = {Finding dominant structures of nonreversible Markov processes}, issn = {1438-0064}, doi = {10.1137/15M1032272}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-55739}, year = {2015}, abstract = {Finding metastable sets as dominant structures of Markov processes has been shown to be especially useful in modeling interesting slow dynamics of various real world complex processes. Furthermore, coarse graining of such processes based on their dominant structures leads to better understanding and dimension reduction of observed systems. However, in many cases, e.g. for nonreversible Markov processes, dominant structures are often not formed by metastable sets but by important cycles or mixture of both. This paper aims at understanding and identifying these different types of dominant structures for reversible as well as nonreversible ergodic Markov processes. Our algorithmic approach generalizes spectral based methods for reversible process by using Schur decomposition techniques which can tackle also nonreversible cases. We illustrate the mathematical construction of our new approach by numerical experiments.}, language = {en} } @misc{GelssMateraSchuette2015, author = {Gelß, Patrick and Matera, Sebastian and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof}, title = {Solving the master equation without kinetic Monte Carlo: tensor train approximations for a CO oxidation model}, issn = {1438-0064}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-55743}, year = {2015}, abstract = {In multiscale models of heterogeneous catalysis, one crucial point is the solution of a Markovian master equation describing the stochastic reaction kinetics. This usually is too high-dimensional to be solved with standard numerical techniques and one has to rely on sampling approaches based on the kinetic Monte Carlo method. In this study we break the curse of dimensionality for the direct solution of the Markovian master equation by exploiting the Tensor Train Format for this purpose. The performance of the approach is demonstrated on a first principles based, reduced model for the CO oxidation on the RuO_2(110) surface. We investigate the complexity for increasing system size and for various reaction conditions. The advantage over the stochastic simulation approach is illustrated by a problem with increased stiffness.}, language = {en} } @misc{EncisoSchuetteDelleSite2015, author = {Enciso, Marta and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof and Delle Site, Luigi}, title = {Influence of pH and sequence in peptide aggregation via molecular simulation}, issn = {1438-0064}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-55805}, year = {2015}, abstract = {We employ a recently developed coarse-grained model for peptides and proteins where the effect of pH is automatically included. We explore the effect of pH in the aggregation process of the amyloidogenic peptide KTVIIE and two related sequences, using three different pH environments. Simulations using large systems (24 peptides chains per box) allow us to correctly account for the formation of realistic peptide aggregates. We evaluate the thermodynamic and kinetic implications of changes in sequence and pH upon peptide aggregation, and we discuss how a minimalistic coarse- grained model can account for these details.}, language = {en} } @misc{SchuetteSarich2015, author = {Sch{\"u}tte, Christof and Sarich, Marco}, title = {A Critical Appraisal of Markov State Models}, issn = {1438-0064}, doi = {10.1140/epjst/e2015-02421-0}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-54218}, year = {2015}, abstract = {Markov State Modelling as a concept for a coarse grained description of the essential kinetics of a molecular system in equilibrium has gained a lot of atten- tion recently. The last 10 years have seen an ever increasing publication activity on how to construct Markov State Models (MSMs) for very different molecular systems ranging from peptides to proteins, from RNA to DNA, and via molecu- lar sensors to molecular aggregation. Simultaneously the accompanying theory behind MSM building and approximation quality has been developed well be- yond the concepts and ideas used in practical applications. This article reviews the main theoretical results, provides links to crucial new developments, outlines the full power of MSM building today, and discusses the essential limitations still to overcome.}, language = {en} } @misc{BanischDjurdjevacConradSchuette2015, author = {Banisch, Ralf and Djurdjevac Conrad, Natasa and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof}, title = {Reactive flows and unproductive cycles for random walks on complex networks}, issn = {1438-0064}, doi = {10.1140/epjst/e2015-02417-8}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-54239}, year = {2015}, abstract = {We present a comprehensive theory for analysis and understanding of transition events between an initial set A and a target set B for general ergodic finite-state space Markov chains or jump processes, including random walks on networks as they occur, e.g., in Markov State Modelling in molecular dynamics. The theory allows us to decompose the probability flow generated by transition events between the sets A and B into the productive part that directly flows from A to B through reaction pathways and the unproductive part that runs in loops and is supported on cycles of the underlying network. It applies to random walks on directed networks and nonreversible Markov processes and can be seen as an extension of Transition Path Theory. Information on reaction pathways and unproductive cycles results from the stochastic cycle decomposition of the underlying network which also allows to compute their corresponding weight, thus characterizing completely which structure is used how often in transition events. The new theory is illustrated by an application to a Markov State Model resulting from weakly damped Langevin dynamics where the unproductive cycles are associated with periodic orbits of the underlying Hamiltonian dynamics.}, language = {en} } @article{ZhangWangHartmannetal.2014, author = {Zhang, Wei and Wang, Han and Hartmann, Carsten and Weber, Marcus and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof}, title = {Applications of the cross-entropy method to importance sampling and optimal control of diffusions}, volume = {36}, journal = {Siam Journal on Scientific Computing}, number = {6}, doi = {10.1137/14096493X}, pages = {A2654 -- A2672}, year = {2014}, language = {en} } @misc{DjurdjevacConradBanischSchuette2014, author = {Djurdjevac Conrad, Natasa and Banisch, Ralf and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof}, title = {Modularity of Directed Networks: Cycle Decomposition Approach}, issn = {1438-0064}, doi = {10.3934/jcd.2015.2.1}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-51166}, year = {2014}, abstract = {The problem of decomposing networks into modules (or clusters) has gained much attention in recent years, as it can account for a coarsegrained description of complex systems, often revealing functional subunits of these systems. A variety of module detection algorithms have been proposed, mostly oriented towards finding hard partitionings of undirected networks. Despite the increasing number of fuzzy clustering methods for directed networks, many of these approaches tend to neglect important directional information. In this paper, we present a novel random walk based approach for finding fuzzy partitions of directed, weighted networks, where edge directions play a crucial role in defining how well nodes in a module are interconnected. We will show that cycle decomposition of a random walk process connects the notion of network modules and information transport in a network, leading to a new, symmetric measure of node communication. Finally, we will use this measure to introduce a communication graph, for which we will show that although being undirected it inherits all necessary information about modular structures from the original network.}, 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} } @article{WinkelmannSchuettevonKleist2014, 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}, volume = {12}, journal = {Communications in Mathematical Sciences}, number = {5}, doi = {10.4310/CMS.2014.v12.n5.a4}, pages = {859 -- 877}, year = {2014}, 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 immunodeficiency 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} } @misc{SarichSchuette2014, author = {Sarich, Marco and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof}, title = {Markov Model Theory}, volume = {797}, journal = {An Introduction to Markov State Models and Their Application to Long Timescale Molecular Simulation}, editor = {Bowman, Gregory R. and Pande, Vijay S. and No{\´e}, Frank}, publisher = {Springer}, doi = {10.1007/978-94-007-7606-7}, pages = {23 -- 44}, year = {2014}, abstract = {This section reviews the relation between the continuous dynamics of a molecular system in thermal equilibrium and the kinetics given by a Markov State Model (MSM). We will introduce the dynamical propagator, an error-less, alternative description of the continuous dynamics, and show how MSMs result from its discretization. This allows for an precise understanding of the approximation quality of MSMs in comparison to the continuous dynamics. The results on the approximation quality are key for the design of good MSMs. While this section is important for understanding the theory of discretization and related systematic errors, practitioners wishing only to learn how to construct MSMs may skip directly to the discussion of Markov model estimation.}, language = {en} } @misc{SarichSchuette2014, author = {Sarich, Marco and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof}, title = {Utilizing hitting times for finding metastable sets in non-reversible Markov chains}, issn = {1438-0064}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-51209}, year = {2014}, abstract = {Techniques for finding metastable or almost invariant sets have been investigated, e.g., for deterministic dynamical systems in set-oriented numerics, for stochastic processes in molecular dynamics, and for random walks on complex networks. Most prominent algorithms are based on spectral apporaches and identify metastable sets via the doimant eigenvalues of the transfer operator associated with the dynamical system under consideration. These algorithms require the dominant eigenvalues to be real-valued. However, for many types of dynamics, e.g. for non-reversible Markov chains, this condition is not met. In this paper we utilize the hitting time apporach to metastable sets and demonstrate how the wellknown statements about optimal metastable decompositions of reversible chains can be reformulated for non-reversible chains if one switches from a spectral approach to an exit time approach. The performance of the resulting algorithm is illustrated by numerical experiments on random walks on complex networks.}, language = {en} } @article{DjurdjevacConradBanischSchuette2015, author = {Djurdjevac Conrad, Natasa and Banisch, Ralf and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof}, title = {Modularity of Directed Networks: Cycle Decomposition Approach}, journal = {Journal of Computational Dynamics 2 (2015) pp. 1-24}, doi = {10.3934/jcd.2015.2.1}, year = {2015}, abstract = {The problem of decomposing networks into modules (or clusters) has gained much attention in recent years, as it can account for a coarsegrained description of complex systems, often revealing functional subunits of these systems. A variety of module detection algorithms have been proposed, mostly oriented towards finding hard partitionings of undirected networks. Despite the increasing number of fuzzy clustering methods for directed networks, many of these approaches tend to neglect important directional information. In this paper, we present a novel random walk based approach for finding fuzzy partitions of directed, weighted networks, where edge directions play a crucial role in defining how well nodes in a module are interconnected. We will show that cycle decomposition of a random walk process connects the notion of network modules and information transport in a network, leading to a new, symmetric measure of node communication. Finally, we will use this measure to introduce a communication graph, for which we will show that although being undirected it inherits all necessary information about modular structures from the original network.}, language = {en} } @article{EncisoSchuetteDelleSite2013, author = {Enciso, Marta and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof and Delle Site, Luigi}, title = {A pH-dependent coarse-grained model for peptides}, volume = {9}, journal = {Soft Matter}, number = {26}, doi = {10.1039/C3SM27893J}, pages = {6118 -- 6127}, year = {2013}, abstract = {We propose the first, to our knowledge, coarse-grained modeling strategy for peptides where the effect of changes of the pH can be efficiently described. The idea is based on modeling the effects of the pH value on the main driving interactions. We use reference data from atomistic simulations and experimental databases and transfer their main physical features to the coarse-grained resolution according to the principle of "consistency across the scales". The coarse-grained model is refined by finding a set of parameters that, when applied to peptides with different sequences and experimental properties, reproduces the experimental and atomistic data of reference. We use such a parameterized model for performing several numerical tests to check its transferability to other systems and to prove the universality of the related modeling strategy. We have tried systems with rather different responses to pH variations, showing a highly satisfactory performance of the model.}, language = {en} } @article{WinkelmannSchuettevonKleist2013, author = {Winkelmann, Stefanie and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof and von Kleist, Max}, title = {Markov Control Processes with Rare State Observation: Sensitivity Analysis with Respect to Optimal Treatment Strategies against HIV-1}, volume = {2}, journal = {International Journal of Biomathematics and Biostatistics}, number = {1}, year = {2013}, abstract = {We present the theory of "Markov decision processes (MDP) with rare state observation" and apply it to optimal treatment scheduling and diagnostic testing to mitigate HIV-1 drug resistance development in resource-poor countries. The developed theory assumes that the state of the process is hidden and can only be determined by making an examination. Each examination produces costs which enter into the considered cost functional so that the resulting optimization problem includes finding optimal examination times. This is a realistic ansatz: In many real world applications, like HIV-1 treatment scheduling, the information about the disease evolution involves substantial costs, such that examination and control are intimately connected. However, a perfect compliance with the optimal strategy can rarely be achieved. This may be particularly true for HIV-1 resistance testing in resource-constrained countries. In the present work, we therefore analyze the sensitivity of the costs with respect to deviations from the optimal examination times both analytically and for the considered application. We discover continuity in the cost-functional with respect to the examination times. For the HIV-application, moreover, sensitivity towards small deviations from the optimal examination rule depends on the disease state. Furthermore, we compare the optimal rare-control strategy to (i) constant control strategies (one action for the remaining time) and to (ii) the permanent control of the original, fully observed MDP. This comparison is done in terms of expected costs and in terms of life-prolongation. The proposed rare-control strategy offers a clear benefit over a constant control, stressing the usefulness of medical testing and informed decision making. This indicates that lower-priced medical tests could improve HIV treatment in resource-constrained settings and warrants further investigation.}, language = {en} } @article{SchuetteNielsenWeber2015, author = {Sch{\"u}tte, Christof and Nielsen, Adam and Weber, Marcus}, title = {Markov State Models and Molecular Alchemy}, volume = {113}, journal = {Molecular Physics}, number = {1}, doi = {10.1080/00268976.2014.944597}, pages = {69 -- 78}, year = {2015}, abstract = {In recent years Markov State Models (MSMs) have attracted a consid- erable amount of attention with regard to modelling conformation changes and associated function of biomolecular systems. They have been used successfully, e.g., for peptides including time-resolved spectroscopic experiments, protein function and protein folding , DNA and RNA, and ligand-receptor interaction in drug design and more complicated multivalent scenarios. In this article a novel reweighting scheme is introduced that allows to construct an MSM for certain molecular system out of an MSM for a similar system. This permits studying how molecular properties on long timescales differ between similar molecular systems without performing full molecular dynamics simulations for each system under con- sideration. The performance of the reweighting scheme is illustrated for simple test cases including one where the main wells of the respective energy landscapes are located differently and an alchemical transformation of butane to pentane where the dimension of the state space is changed.}, language = {en} } @article{AgarwalWangSchuetteetal.2014, author = {Agarwal, Animesh and Wang, Han and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof and Delle Site, Luigi}, title = {Chemical potential of liquids and mixtures via Adaptive Resolution Simulation}, volume = {141}, journal = {The Journal of Chemical Physics}, doi = {10.1063/1.4886807}, pages = {034102}, year = {2014}, language = {en} } @misc{WangSchuette2014, author = {Wang, Han and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof}, title = {Building Markov State Models for Periodically Driven Non-Equilibrium Systems}, issn = {1438-0064}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-53167}, year = {2014}, abstract = {Recent years have seen an increased interest in non-equilibrium molecular dynamics (NEMD) simulations, especially for molecular systems with periodic forcing by external fields, e.g., in the context of studying effects of electromagnetic radiation on the human body tissue. Lately, an NEMD methods with local thermostating has been proposed that allows for studying non-equilibrium processes in a statistically reliable and thermodynamically consistent way. In this article, we demonstrate how to construct Markov State Models (MSMs) for such NEMD simulations. MSM building has been well-established for systems in equilibrium where MSMs with just a few (macro-)states allow for accurate reproduction of the essential kinetics of the molecular system under consideration. Non-equilibrium MSMs have been lacking so far. The article presents how to construct such MSMs and illustrates their validity and usefulness for the case of conformation dynamics of alanine dipeptide in an external electric field.}, language = {en} } @misc{GulSchuetteBernhard2015, author = {Gul, Raheem and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof and Bernhard, Stefan}, title = {Mathematical modeling and sensitivity analysis of arterial anastomosis in arm arteries}, issn = {1438-0064}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-54339}, year = {2015}, abstract = {Cardiovascular diseases are one of the major problems in medicine today and the number of patients increases worldwide. To find the most efficient treatment, prior knowledge about function and dysfunction of the cardiovas- cular system is required and methods need to be developed that identify the disease in an early stage. Mathematical modeling is a powerful tool for prediction and investigation of cardiovascular diseases. It has been shown that the Windkessel model, being based on an analogy between electrical circuits and fluid flow, is a simple but effective method to model the human cardiovascular system. In this paper, we have applied parametric local sensitivity analysis (LSA) to a linear elastic model of the arm arteries, to find and rank sensitive param- eters that may be helpful in clinical diagnosis. A computational model for end-to-side anastomosis (superior ulnar collateral anastomosis with posterior ulnar recurrent, SUC-PUR) is carried out to study the effects of some clinically relevant haemodynamic parameters like blood flow resistance and terminal re- sistance on pressure and flow at different locations of the arm artery. In this context, we also discuss the spatio-temporal dependency of local sensitivities. The sensitivities with respect to cardiovascular parameters reveal the flow resistance and diameter of the vessels as most sensitive parameters. These parameters play a key role in diagnosis of severe stenosis and aneurysms. In contrast, wall thickness and elastic modulus are found to be less sensitive.}, language = {en} } @book{OPUS4-5339, title = {Molecular Dynamics Simulation}, journal = {Entropy (special issue)}, editor = {Ciccotti, Giovanni and Ferrario, Mauro and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof}, publisher = {Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (MDPI)}, year = {2014}, language = {en} } @article{KlusSchuette2016, author = {Klus, Stefan and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof}, title = {Towards tensor-based methods for the numerical approximation of the Perron-Frobenius and Koopman operator}, volume = {3}, journal = {Journal of Computational Dynamics}, number = {2}, doi = {10.3934/jcd.2016007}, pages = {139 -- 161}, year = {2016}, abstract = {The global behavior of dynamical systems can be studied by analyzing the eigenvalues and corresponding eigenfunctions of linear operators associated with the system. Two important operators which are frequently used to gain insight into the system's behavior are the Perron-Frobenius operator and the Koopman operator. Due to the curse of dimensionality, computing the eigenfunctions of high-dimensional systems is in general infeasible. We will propose a tensor-based reformulation of two numerical methods for computing finite-dimensional approximations of the aforementioned infinite-dimensional operators, namely Ulam's method and Extended Dynamic Mode Decomposition (EDMD). The aim of the tensor formulation is to approximate the eigenfunctions by low-rank tensors, potentially resulting in a significant reduction of the time and memory required to solve the resulting eigenvalue problems, provided that such a low-rank tensor decomposition exists. Typically, not all variables of a high-dimensional dynamical system contribute equally to the system's behavior, often the dynamics can be decomposed into slow and fast processes, which is also reflected in the eigenfunctions. Thus, the weak coupling between different variables might be approximated by low-rank tensor cores. We will illustrate the efficiency of the tensor-based formulation of Ulam's method and EDMD using simple stochastic differential equations.}, language = {en} } @article{HartmannSchuetteZhang2016, author = {Hartmann, Carsten and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof and Zhang, Wei}, title = {Model reduction algorithms for optimal control and importance sampling of diffusions}, volume = {29}, journal = {Nonlinearity}, number = {8}, doi = {10.1088/0951-7715/29/8/2298}, pages = {2298 -- 2326}, year = {2016}, abstract = {We propose numerical algorithms for solving optimal control and importance sampling problems based on simplified models. The algorithms combine model reduction techniques for multiscale diffusions and stochastic optimization tools, with the aim of reducing the original, possibly high-dimensional problem to a lower dimensional representation of the dynamics, in which only a few relevant degrees of freedom are controlled or biased. Specifically, we study situations in which either a reaction coordinate onto which the dynamics can be projected is known, or situations in which the dynamics shows strongly localized behavior in the small noise regime. No explicit assumptions about small parameters or scale separation have to be made. We illustrate the approach with simple, but paradigmatic numerical examples.}, language = {en} } @article{KlusKoltaiSchuette2016, author = {Klus, Stefan and Koltai, Peter and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof}, title = {On the numerical approximation of the Perron-Frobenius and Koopman operator}, volume = {3}, journal = {Journal of Computational Dynamics}, number = {1}, doi = {10.3934/jcd.2016003}, pages = {51 -- 77}, year = {2016}, abstract = {Information about the behavior of dynamical systems can often be obtained by analyzing the eigenvalues and corresponding eigenfunctions of linear operators associated with a dynamical system. Examples of such operators are the Perron-Frobenius and the Koopman operator. In this paper, we will review di� fferent methods that have been developed over the last decades to compute � infinite-dimensional approximations of these in� finite-dimensional operators - in particular Ulam's method and Extended Dynamic Mode Decomposition (EDMD) - and highlight the similarities and di� fferences between these approaches. The results will be illustrated using simple stochastic di� fferential equations and molecular dynamics examples.}, language = {en} } @article{HuttaryGoubergritsSchuetteetal.2017, author = {Huttary, Rudolf and Goubergrits, Leonid and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof and Bernhard, Stefan}, title = {Simulation, Identification and Statistical Variation in Cardiovascular Analysis (SISCA) - a Software Framework for Multi-compartment Lumped Modeling}, volume = {87}, journal = {Computers in Biology and Medicine}, doi = {10.1016/j.compbiomed.2017.05.021}, pages = {104 -- 123}, year = {2017}, language = {en} } @misc{GuptaGramatkeEinspanieretal.2017, author = {Gupta, Pooja and Gramatke, Annika and Einspanier, Ralf and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof and von Kleist, Max and Sharbati, Jutta}, title = {In silicio cytotoxicity assessment on cultured rat intestinal cells deduced from cellular impedance measurements}, issn = {1438-0064}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-62666}, year = {2017}, abstract = {Early and reliable identification of chemical toxicity is of utmost importance. At the same time, reduction of animal testing is paramount. Therefore, methods that improve the interpretability and usability of in vitro assays are essential. xCELLigence's real-time cell analyzer (RTCA) provides a novel, fast and cost effective in vitro method to probe compound toxicity. We developed a simple mathematical framework for the qualitative and quantitative assessment of toxicity for RTCA measurements. Compound toxicity, in terms of its 50\% inhibitory concentration IC_{50} on cell growth, and parameters related to cell turnover were estimated on cultured IEC-6 cells exposed to 10 chemicals at varying concentrations. Our method estimated IC50 values of 113.05, 7.16, 28.69 and 725.15 μM for the apparently toxic compounds 2-acetylamino-fluorene, aflatoxin B1, benzo-[a]-pyrene and chloramphenicol in the tested cell line, in agreement with literature knowledge. IC_{50} values of all apparent in vivo non-toxic compounds were estimated to be non-toxic by our method. Corresponding estimates from RTCA's in-built model gave false positive (toxicity) predictions in 5/10 cases. Taken together, our proposed method reduces false positive predictions and reliably identifies chemical toxicity based on impedance measurements. The source code for the developed method including instructions is available at https://git.zib.de/bzfgupta/toxfit/tree/master.}, language = {en} } @article{KlusNueskeKoltaietal.2018, author = {Klus, Stefan and N{\"u}ske, Feliks and Koltai, Peter and Wu, Hao and Kevrekidis, Ioannis and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof and No{\´e}, Frank}, title = {Data-driven model reduction and transfer operator approximation}, volume = {28}, journal = {Journal of Nonlinear Science}, number = {3}, doi = {10.1007/s00332-017-9437-7}, pages = {985 -- 1010}, year = {2018}, language = {en} } @article{KoltaiCiccottiSchuette2016, author = {Koltai, Peter and Ciccotti, Giovanni and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof}, title = {On Markov state models for non-equilibrium molecular dynamics}, volume = {145}, journal = {The Journal of Chemical Physics}, number = {174103}, doi = {10.1063/1.4966157}, year = {2016}, language = {en} } @article{GelssMateraSchuette2016, author = {Gelß, Patrick and Matera, Sebastian and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof}, title = {Solving the master equation without kinetic Monte Carlo: Tensor train approximations for a CO oxidation model}, volume = {314}, journal = {Journal of Computational Physics}, doi = {10.1016/j.jcp.2016.03.025}, pages = {489 -- 502}, year = {2016}, abstract = {In multiscale modeling of heterogeneous catalytic processes, one crucial point is the solution of a Markovian master equation describing the stochastic reaction kinetics. Usually, this is too high-dimensional to be solved with standard numerical techniques and one has to rely on sampling approaches based on the kinetic Monte Carlo method. In this study we break the curse of dimensionality for the direct solution of the Markovian master equation by exploiting the Tensor Train Format for this purpose. The performance of the approach is demonstrated on a first principles based, reduced model for the CO oxidation on the RuO2(110) surface. We investigate the complexity for increasing system size and for various reaction conditions. The advantage over the stochastic simulation approach is illustrated by a problem with increased}, language = {en} } @article{VegaSchuetteConrad2016, author = {Vega, Iliusi and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof and Conrad, Tim}, title = {Finding metastable states in real-world time series with recurrence networks}, volume = {445}, journal = {Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications}, doi = {10.1016/j.physa.2015.10.041}, pages = {1 -- 17}, year = {2016}, abstract = {In the framework of time series analysis with recurrence networks, we introduce a self-adaptive method that determines the elusive recurrence threshold and identifies metastable states in complex real-world time series. As initial step, we introduce a way to set the embedding parameters used to reconstruct the state space from the time series. We set them as the ones giving the maximum Shannon entropy of the diagonal line length distribution for the first simultaneous minima of recurrence rate and Shannon entropy. To identify metastable states, as well as the transitions between them, we use a soft partitioning algorithm for module finding which is specifically developed for the case in which a system shows metastability. We illustrate our method with a complex time series example. Finally, we show the robustness of our method for identifying metastable states. Our results suggest that our method is robust for identifying metastable states in complex time series, even when introducing considerable levels of noise and missing data points.}, language = {en} } @article{ConradGenzelCvetkovicetal.2017, author = {Conrad, Tim and Genzel, Martin and Cvetkovic, Nada and Wulkow, Niklas and Leichtle, Alexander Benedikt and Vybiral, Jan and Kytyniok, Gitta and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof}, title = {Sparse Proteomics Analysis - a compressed sensing-based approach for feature selection and classification of high-dimensional proteomics mass spectrometry data}, volume = {18}, journal = {BMC Bioinfomatics}, number = {160}, doi = {10.1186/s12859-017-1565-4}, year = {2017}, abstract = {Background: High-throughput proteomics techniques, such as mass spectrometry (MS)-based approaches, produce very high-dimensional data-sets. In a clinical setting one is often interested in how mass spectra differ between patients of different classes, for example spectra from healthy patients vs. spectra from patients having a particular disease. Machine learning algorithms are needed to (a) identify these discriminating features and (b) classify unknown spectra based on this feature set. Since the acquired data is usually noisy, the algorithms should be robust against noise and outliers, while the identified feature set should be as small as possible. Results: We present a new algorithm, Sparse Proteomics Analysis (SPA),based on thet heory of compressed sensing that allows us to identify a minimal discriminating set of features from mass spectrometry data-sets. We show (1) how our method performs on artificial and real-world data-sets, (2) that its performance is competitive with standard (and widely used) algorithms for analyzing proteomics data, and (3) that it is robust against random and systematic noise. We further demonstrate the applicability of our algorithm to two previously published clinical data-sets.}, language = {en} } @article{RuedrichSarichSchuette2017, author = {R{\"u}drich, S. and Sarich, Marco and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof}, title = {Utilizing hitting times for finding metastable sets in non-reversible Markov chains}, journal = {Journal of Comp. Dynamics}, year = {2017}, language = {en} } @article{GuptaGramatkeEinspanieretal.2017, author = {Gupta, Pooja and Gramatke, Annika and Einspanier, Ralf and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof and von Kleist, Max and Sharbati, Jutta}, title = {In silico cytotoxicity assessment on cultured rat intestinal cells deduced from cellular impedance measurements}, volume = {41}, journal = {Toxicology in Vitro}, issn = {1438-0064}, pages = {179 -- 188}, year = {2017}, abstract = {Early and reliable identification of chemical toxicity is of utmost importance. At the same time, reduction of animal testing is paramount. Therefore, methods that improve the interpretability and usability of in vitro assays are essential. xCELLigence's real-time cell analyzer (RTCA) provides a novel, fast and cost effective in vitro method to probe compound toxicity. We developed a simple mathematical framework for the qualitative and quantitative assessment of toxicity for RTCA measurements. Compound toxicity, in terms of its 50\% inhibitory concentration IC50 on cell growth, and parameters related to cell turnover were estimated on cultured IEC-6 cells exposed to 10 chemicals at varying concentrations. Our method estimated IC50 values of 113.05, 7.16, 28.69 and 725.15 μM for the apparently toxic compounds 2-acetylamino-fluorene, aflatoxin B1, benzo-[a]-pyrene and chloramphenicol in the tested cell line, in agreement with literature knowledge. IC50 values of all apparent in vivo non-toxic compounds were estimated to be non-toxic by our method. Corresponding estimates from RTCA's in-built model gave false positive (toxicity) predictions in 5/10 cases. Taken together, our proposed method reduces false positive predictions and reliably identifies chemical toxicity based on impedance measurements. The source code for the developed method including instructions is available at https://git.zib.de/bzfgupta/toxfit/tree/master.}, language = {en} } @article{KlusGelssPeitzetal.2018, author = {Klus, Stefan and Gelß, Patrick and Peitz, Sebastian and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof}, title = {Tensor-based dynamic mode decomposition}, volume = {31}, journal = {Nonlinearity}, number = {7}, publisher = {IOP Publishing Ltd \& London Mathematical Society}, doi = {10.1088/1361-6544/aabc8f}, year = {2018}, language = {en} } @article{WeberFackeldeySchuette2017, author = {Weber, Marcus and Fackeldey, Konstantin and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof}, title = {Set-Free Markov State Model Building}, volume = {146}, journal = {Journal of Chemical Physics}, number = {12}, doi = {10.1063/1.4978501}, year = {2017}, language = {en} } @misc{WinkelmannSchuette2017, author = {Winkelmann, Stefanie and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof}, title = {Hybrid Models for Chemical Reaction Networks: Multiscale Theory and Application to Gene Regulatory Systems}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-64264}, year = {2017}, abstract = {Well-mixed stochastic chemical kinetics are properly modelled by the chemical master equation (CME) and associated Markov jump processes in molecule number space. If the reactants are present in large amounts, however, corresponding simulations of the stochastic dynamics become computationally expensive and model reductions are demanded. The classical model reduction approach uniformly rescales the overall dynamics to obtain deterministic systems characterized by ordinary differential equations, the well-known mass action reaction rate equations. For systems with multiple scales there exist hybrid approaches that keep parts of the system discrete while another part is approximated either using Langevin dynamics or deterministically. This paper aims at giving a coherent overview of the different hybrid approaches, focusing on their basic concepts and the relation between them. We derive a novel general description of such hybrid models that allows to express various forms by one type of equation. We also check in how far the approaches apply to model extensions of the CME for dynamics which do not comply with the central well-mixed condition and require some spatial resolution. A simple but meaningful gene expression system with negative self-regulation is analysed to illustrate the different approximation qualities of some of the hybrid approaches discussed.}, language = {en} } @misc{BittracherKoltaiKlusetal.2017, author = {Bittracher, Andreas and Koltai, P{\´e}ter and Klus, Stefan and Banisch, Ralf and Dellnitz, Michael and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof}, title = {Transition manifolds of complex metastable systems: Theory and data-driven computation of effective dynamics}, issn = {1438-0064}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-63822}, year = {2017}, abstract = {We consider complex dynamical systems showing metastable behavior but no local separation of fast and slow time scales. The article raises the question of whether such systems exhibit a low-dimensional manifold supporting its effective dynamics. For answering this question, we aim at finding nonlinear coordinates, called reaction coordinates, such that the projection of the dynamics onto these coordinates preserves the dominant time scales of the dynamics. We show that, based on a specific reducibility property, the existence of good low-dimensional reaction coordinates preserving the dominant time scales is guaranteed. Based on this theoretical framework, we develop and test a novel numerical approach for computing good reaction coordinates. The proposed algorithmic approach is fully local and thus not prone to the curse of dimension with respect to the state space of the dynamics. Hence, it is a promising method for data-based model reduction of complex dynamical systems such as molecular dynamics.}, language = {en} } @misc{KoltaiSchuette2017, author = {Koltai, P{\´e}ter and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof}, title = {A multi scale perturbation expansion approach for Markov state modeling of non-stationary molecular dynamics}, issn = {1438-0064}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-64868}, year = {2017}, abstract = {We investigate metastable dynamical systems subject to non-stationary forcing as they appear in molecular dynamics for systems driven by external fields. We show, that if the strength of the forcing is inversely proportional to the length of the slow metastable time scales of the unforced system, then the effective behavior of the forced system on slow time scales can be described by a low-dimensional reduced master equation. Our construction is explicit and uses the multiscale perturbation expansion method called two-timing, or method of multiple scales. The reduced master equation—a Markov state model—can be assembled by constructing two equilibrium Markov state models; one for the unforced system, and one for a slightly perturbed one.}, language = {en} } @article{BennHiepenOsterlandetal.2017, author = {Benn, Andreas and Hiepen, Christian and Osterland, Marc and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof and Zwijsen, An and Knaus, Petra}, title = {Role of bone morphogenetic proteins in sprouting angiogenesis: differential BMP receptor-dependent signaling pathways balance stalk vs. tip cell competence}, volume = {31}, journal = {FASEB Journal}, number = {11}, doi = {10.1096/fj.201700193RR}, pages = {4720 -- 4733}, year = {2017}, abstract = {Before the onset of sprouting angiogenesis, the endothelium is prepatterned for the positioning of tip and stalk cells. Both cell identities are not static, as endothelial cells (ECs) constantly compete for the tip cell position in a dynamic fashion. Here, we show that both bone morphogenetic protein (BMP) 2 and BMP6 are proangiogenic in vitro and ex vivo and that the BMP type I receptors, activin receptor-like kinase (ALK)3 and ALK2, play crucial and distinct roles in this process. BMP2 activates the expression of tip cell-associated genes, such as DLL4 (delta-like ligand 4) and KDR (kinase insert domain receptor), and p38-heat shock protein 27 (HSP27)-dependent cell migration, thereby generating tip cell competence. Whereas BMP6 also triggers collective cell migration via the p38-HSP27 signaling axis, BMP6 induces in addition SMAD1/5 signaling, thereby promoting the expression of stalk cell-associated genes, such as HES1 (hairy and enhancer of split 1) and FLT1 (fms-like tyrosine kinase 1). Specifically, ALK3 is required for sprouting from HUVEC spheroids, whereas ALK2 represses sprout formation. We demonstrate that expression levels and respective complex formation of BMP type I receptors in ECs determine stalk vs. tip cell identity, thus contributing to endothelial plasticity during sprouting angiogenesis. As antiangiogenic monotherapies that target the VEGF or ALK1 pathways have not fulfilled efficacy objectives in clinical trials, the selective targeting of the ALK2/3 pathways may be an attractive new approach.}, language = {en} } @article{WinkelmannSchuette2017, author = {Winkelmann, Stefanie and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof}, title = {Hybrid models for chemical reaction networks: Multiscale theory and application to gene regulatory systems}, volume = {147}, journal = {The Journal of Chemical Physics}, number = {11}, doi = {10.1063/1.4986560}, pages = {114115-1 -- 114115-18}, year = {2017}, abstract = {Well-mixed stochastic chemical kinetics are properly modeled by the chemical master equation (CME) and associated Markov jump processes in molecule number space. If the reactants are present in large amounts, however, corresponding simulations of the stochastic dynamics become computationally expensive and model reductions are demanded. The classical model reduction approach uniformly rescales the overall dynamics to obtain deterministic systems characterized by ordinary differential equations, the well-known mass action reaction rate equations. For systems with multiple scales, there exist hybrid approaches that keep parts of the system discrete while another part is approximated either using Langevin dynamics or deterministically. This paper aims at giving a coherent overview of the different hybrid approaches, focusing on their basic concepts and the relation between them. We derive a novel general description of such hybrid models that allows expressing various forms by one type of equation. We also check in how far the approaches apply to model extensions of the CME for dynamics which do not comply with the central well-mixed condition and require some spatial resolution. A simple but meaningful gene expression system with negative self-regulation is analysed to illustrate the different approximation qualities of some of the hybrid approaches discussed. Especially, we reveal the cause of error in the case of small volume approximations.}, language = {en} } @misc{VegaSchuetteConrad2014, author = {Vega, Iliusi and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof and Conrad, Tim}, title = {SAIMeR: Self-adapted method for the identification of metastable states in real-world time series}, issn = {1438-0064}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-50130}, year = {2014}, abstract = {In the framework of time series analysis with recurrence networks, we introduce SAIMeR, a heuristic self-adapted method that determines the elusive recurrence threshold and identifies metastable states in complex time series. To identify metastable states as well as the transitions between them, we use graph theory concepts and a fuzzy partitioning clustering algorithm. We illustrate SAIMeR by applying it to three real-world time series and show that it is able to identify metastable states in real-world data with noise and missing data points. Finally, we suggest a way to choose the embedding parameters used to construct the state space in which this method is performed, based on the analysis of how the values of these parameters affect two recurrence quantitative measurements: recurrence rate and entropy.}, language = {en} } @misc{BockmayrSiebertRoeblitzetal.2014, author = {Bockmayr, Alexander and Siebert, Heike and R{\"o}blitz, Susanna and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof and Deuflhard, Peter}, title = {Advanced mathematical modeling in systems biology}, volume = {1}, journal = {MATHEON-Mathematics for Key Technologies}, editor = {Deuflhard, Peter and Gr{\"o}tschel, Martin and H{\"o}mberg, Dietmar and Kramer, J{\"u}rg and Mehrmann, Volker and Polthier, Konrad and Schmidt, Frank and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof and Skutela, Martin and Sprekels, J{\"u}rgen}, publisher = {European Mathematical Society}, pages = {29 -- 44}, year = {2014}, language = {en} } @misc{AgarwalWangSchuetteetal.2014, author = {Agarwal, Animesh and Wang, Han and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof and Delle Site, Luigi}, title = {Chemical potential of liquids and mixtures via Adaptive Resolution Simulation}, issn = {1438-0064}, doi = {10.1063/1.4886807}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-50972}, year = {2014}, abstract = {We employ the adaptive resolution approach AdResS, in its recently developed Grand Canonicallike version (GC-AdResS) [Wang et al. Phys.Rev.X 3, 011018 (2013)], to calculate the excess chemical potential, \$μ^{ex}\$, of various liquids and mixtures. We compare our results with those obtained from full atomistic simulations using the technique of thermodynamic integration and show a satisfactory agreement. In GC-AdResS the procedure to calculate \$μ^{ex}\$ corresponds to the process of standard initial equilibration of the system; this implies that, independently of the specific aim of the study, \$μ^{ex}\$, for each molecular species, is automatically calculated every time a GC-AdResS simulation is performed.}, language = {en} } @misc{BanischSchuetteDjurdjevacConrad2014, author = {Banisch, Ralf and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof and Djurdjevac Conrad, Natasa}, title = {Module Detection in Directed Real-World Networks}, issn = {1438-0064}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-49849}, year = {2014}, abstract = {We investigate the problem of finding modules (or clusters, communities) in directed networks. Until now, most articles on this topic have been oriented towards finding complete network partitions despite the fact that this often is unwanted. We present a novel random walk based approach for non-complete partitions of the directed network into modules in which some nodes do not belong to only one of the modules but to several or to none at all. The new random walk process is reversible even for directed networks but inherits all necessary information about directions and structure of the original network. We demonstrate the performance of the new method in application to a real-world earthquake network.}, language = {en} } @misc{SchuetteDeuflhardNoeetal.2014, author = {Sch{\"u}tte, Christof and Deuflhard, Peter and No{\´e}, Frank and Weber, Marcus}, title = {Design of functional molecules}, volume = {1}, journal = {MATHEON-Mathematics for Key Technologies}, editor = {Deuflhard, Peter and Gr{\"o}tschel, Martin and H{\"o}mberg, Dietmar and Horst, Ulrich and Kramer, J{\"u}rg and Mehrmann, Volker and Polthier, Konrad and Schmidt, Frank and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof and Skutella, Martin and Sprekels, J{\"u}rgen}, publisher = {European Mathematical Society}, pages = {49 -- 65}, year = {2014}, language = {en} } @misc{DeuflhardSchuette2014, author = {Deuflhard, Peter and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof}, title = {Life Sciences}, volume = {1}, journal = {MATHEON-Mathematics for Key Technologies}, editor = {Deuflhard, Peter and Gr{\"o}tschel, Martin and H{\"o}mberg, Dietmar and Horst, Ulrich and Kramer, J{\"u}rg and Mehrmann, Volker and Polthier, Konrad and Schmidt, Frank and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof and Skutella, Martin and Sprekels, J{\"u}rgen}, publisher = {European Mathematical Society}, pages = {1 -- 5}, year = {2014}, language = {en} } @misc{SchuetteConrad2014, author = {Sch{\"u}tte, Christof and Conrad, Tim}, title = {Showcase 3: Information-based medicine}, volume = {1}, journal = {MATHEON-Mathematics for Key Technologies}, editor = {Deuflhard, Peter and Gr{\"o}tschel, Martin and H{\"o}mberg, Dietmar and Horst, Ulrich and Kramer, J{\"u}rg and Mehrmann, Volker and Polthier, Konrad and Schmidt, Frank and Skutella, Martin and Sprekels, J{\"u}rgen}, publisher = {European Mathematical Society}, pages = {66 -- 67}, year = {2014}, language = {en} } @misc{ZhangWangHartmannetal.2014, author = {Zhang, Wei and Wang, Han and Hartmann, Carsten and Weber, Marcus and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof}, title = {Applications of the cross-entropy method to importance sampling and optimal control of diffusions}, issn = {1438-0064}, doi = {10.1137/14096493X}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-49720}, year = {2014}, abstract = {We study the cross-entropy method for diffusions. One of the results is a versatile cross-entropy algorithm that can be used to design efficient importance sampling strategies for rare events or to solve optimal control problems. The approach is based on the minimization of a suitable cross-entropy functional, with a parametric family of exponentially tilted probability distributions. We illustrate the new algorithm with several numerical examples and discuss algorithmic issues and possible extensions of the method.}, language = {en} } @misc{KlebanovSikorskiSchuetteetal.2016, author = {Klebanov, Ilja and Sikorski, Alexander and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof and R{\"o}blitz, Susanna}, title = {Prior estimation and Bayesian inference from large cohort data sets}, issn = {1438-0064}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-57475}, year = {2016}, abstract = {One of the main goals of mathematical modelling in systems biology related to medical applications is to obtain patient-specific parameterisations and model predictions. In clinical practice, however, the number of available measurements for single patients is usually limited due to time and cost restrictions. This hampers the process of making patient-specific predictions about the outcome of a treatment. On the other hand, data are often available for many patients, in particular if extensive clinical studies have been performed. Using these population data, we propose an iterative algorithm for contructing an informative prior distribution, which then serves as the basis for computing patient-specific posteriors and obtaining individual predictions. We demonsrate the performance of our method by applying it to a low-dimensional parameter estimation problem in a toy model as well as to a high-dimensional ODE model of the human menstrual cycle, which represents a typical example from systems biology modelling.}, language = {en} } @article{KryvenRoeblitzSchuette2015, author = {Kryven, Ivan and R{\"o}blitz, Susanna and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof}, title = {Solution of the chemical master equation by radial basis functions approximation with interface tracking}, volume = {9}, journal = {BMC Systems Biology}, number = {67}, doi = {10.1186/s12918-015-0210-y}, pages = {1 -- 12}, year = {2015}, abstract = {Background. The chemical master equation is the fundamental equation of stochastic chemical kinetics. This differential-difference equation describes temporal evolution of the probability density function for states of a chemical system. A state of the system, usually encoded as a vector, represents the number of entities or copy numbers of interacting species, which are changing according to a list of possible reactions. It is often the case, especially when the state vector is high-dimensional, that the number of possible states the system may occupy is too large to be handled computationally. One way to get around this problem is to consider only those states that are associated with probabilities that are greater than a certain threshold level. Results. We introduce an algorithm that significantly reduces computational resources and is especially powerful when dealing with multi-modal distributions. The algorithm is built according to two key principles. Firstly, when performing time integration, the algorithm keeps track of the subset of states with significant probabilities (essential support). Secondly, the probability distribution that solves the equation is parametrised with a small number of coefficients using collocation on Gaussian radial basis functions. The system of basis functions is chosen in such a way that the solution is approximated only on the essential support instead of the whole state space. Discussion. In order to demonstrate the effectiveness of the method, we consider four application examples: a) the self-regulating gene model, b) the 2-dimensional bistable toggle switch, c) a generalisation of the bistable switch to a 3-dimensional tristable problem, and d) a 3-dimensional cell differentiation model that, depending on parameter values, may operate in bistable or tristable modes. In all multidimensional examples the manifold containing the system states with significant probabilities undergoes drastic transformations over time. This fact makes the examples especially challenging for numerical methods. Conclusions. The proposed method is a new numerical approach permitting to approximately solve a wide range of problems that have been hard to tackle until now. A full representation of multi-dimensional distributions is recovered. The method is especially attractive when dealing with models that yield solutions of a complex structure, for instance, featuring multi-stability. Electronic version: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1752-0509/9/67}, language = {en} } @article{EncisoSchuetteDelleSite2015, author = {Enciso, Marta and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof and Delle Site, Luigi}, title = {Influence of pH and sequence in peptide aggregation via molecular simulation}, volume = {143}, journal = {Journal of Chemical Physics}, number = {24}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4935707}, year = {2015}, language = {en} } @article{SchuetteSarich2015, author = {Sch{\"u}tte, Christof and Sarich, Marco}, title = {A Critical Appraisal of Markov State Models}, volume = {224}, journal = {The European Physical Journal Special Topics}, number = {12}, doi = {10.1140/epjst/e2015-02421-0}, pages = {2445 -- 2462}, year = {2015}, abstract = {Markov State Modelling as a concept for a coarse grained description of the essential kinetics of a molecular system in equilibrium has gained a lot of atten- tion recently. The last 10 years have seen an ever increasing publication activity on how to construct Markov State Models (MSMs) for very different molecular systems ranging from peptides to proteins, from RNA to DNA, and via molecu- lar sensors to molecular aggregation. Simultaneously the accompanying theory behind MSM building and approximation quality has been developed well be- yond the concepts and ideas used in practical applications. This article reviews the main theoretical results, provides links to crucial new developments, outlines the full power of MSM building today, and discusses the essential limitations still to overcome.}, language = {en} } @misc{HartmannBanischSarichetal.2013, author = {Hartmann, Carsten and Banisch, Ralf and Sarich, Marco and Badowski, Thomas and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof}, title = {Characterization of Rare Events in Molecular Dynamics}, issn = {1438-0064}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-42410}, year = {2013}, abstract = {A good deal of molecular dynamics simulations aims at predicting and quantifying rare events, such as the folding of a protein or a phase transition. Simulating rare events is often prohibitive, especially if the equations of motion are high-dimensional, as is the case in molecular dynamics. Various algorithms have been proposed for efficiently computing mean first passage times, transition rates or reaction pathways. This article surveys and discusses recent developments in the field of rare event simulation and outlines a new approach that combines ideas from optimal control and statistical mechanics. The optimal control approach described in detail resembles the use of Jarzynski's equality for free energy calculations, but with an optimized protocol that speeds up the sampling, while (theoretically) giving variance-free estimators of the rare events statistics. We illustrate the new approach with two numerical examples and discuss its relation to existing methods.}, language = {en} } @misc{SarichBanischHartmannetal.2013, author = {Sarich, Marco and Banisch, Ralf and Hartmann, Carsten and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof}, title = {Markov State Models for Rare Events in Molecular Dynamics}, issn = {1438-0064}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-42420}, year = {2013}, abstract = {Rare but important transition events between long lived states are a key feature of many molecular systems. In many cases the computation of rare event statistics by direct molecular dynamics (MD) simulations is infeasible even on the most powerful computers because of the immensely long simulation timescales needed. Recently a technique for spatial discretization of the molecular state space designed to help overcome such problems, so-called Markov State Models (MSMs), has attracted a lot of attention. We review the theoretical background and algorithmic realization of MSMs and illustrate their use by some numerical examples. Furthermore we introduce a novel approach to using MSMs for the efficient solution of optimal control problems that appear in applications where one desires to optimize molecular properties by means of external controls.}, language = {en} } @misc{SchuetteNielsenWeber2014, author = {Sch{\"u}tte, Christof and Nielsen, Adam and Weber, Marcus}, title = {Markov State Models and Molecular Alchemy}, issn = {1438-0064}, doi = {10.1080/00268976.2014.944597}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-46718}, year = {2014}, abstract = {In recent years Markov State Models (MSMs) have attracted a consid- erable amount of attention with regard to modelling conformation changes and associated function of biomolecular systems. They have been used successfully, e.g., for peptides including time-resolved spectroscopic ex- periments, protein function and protein folding , DNA and RNA, and ligand-receptor interaction in drug design and more complicated multi- valent scenarios. In this article a novel reweighting scheme is introduced that allows to construct an MSM for certain molecular system out of an MSM for a similar system. This permits studying how molecular proper- ties on long timescales differ between similar molecular systems without performing full molecular dynamics simulations for each system under con- sideration. The performance of the reweighting scheme is illustrated for simple test cases including one where the main wells of the respective en- ergy landscapes are located differently and an alchemical transformation of butane to pentane where the dimension of the state space is changed.}, language = {en} } @misc{OsterlandBennProhaskaetal.2015, author = {Osterland, Marc and Benn, Andreas and Prohaska, Steffen and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof}, title = {Single Cell Tracking in Phase-Contrast Microscopy}, journal = {EMBL Symposium 2015 - Seeing is Believing - Imaging the Processes of Life}, year = {2015}, abstract = {In this work, we developed an automatic algorithm to analyze cell migration in chemotaxis assays, based on phase-contrast time-lapse microscopy. While manual approaches are still widely used in recent publications, our algorithm is able to track hundreds of single cells per frame. The extracted paths are analysed with traditional geometrical approaches as well as diffusion-driven Markov state models (MSM). Based on these models, a detailed view on spatial and temporal effects is possible. Using our new approach on experimental data, we are able to distinguish between directed migration (e.g. towards a VEGF gradient) and random migration without favored direction. A calculation of the committor probabilities reveals that cells of the whole image area are more likely to migrate directly towards the VEGF than away from it during the first four hours. However, in absence of a chemoattractant, cells migrate more likely to their nearest image border. These conclusions are supported by the spatial mean directions. In a next step, the cell-cell interaction during migration and the migration of cell clusters will be analyzed. Furthermore, we want to observe phenotypical changes during migration based on fluorescence microscopy and machine learning. The algorithm is part of a collaborative platform which brings the experimental expertise of scientists from life sciences and the analytical knowledge of computer scientists together. This platform is built using web-based technologies with a responsive real-time user interface. All data, including raw and metadata as well as the accompanying results, will be stored in a secure and scalable compute cluster. The compute cluster provides sufficient space and computational power for modern image-based experiments and their analyses. Specific versions of data and results can be tagged to keep immutable records for archival.}, language = {en} } @misc{KoltaiCiccottiSchuette2016, author = {Koltai, Peter and Ciccotti, Giovanni and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof}, title = {On metastability and Markov state models for non-stationary molecular dynamics}, volume = {174103}, journal = {The Journal of Chemical Physics}, edition = {145}, issn = {1438-0064}, doi = {10.1063/1.4966157}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-57869}, year = {2016}, abstract = {We utilize the theory of coherent sets to build Markov state models for non- equilibrium molecular dynamical systems. Unlike for systems in equilibrium, "meta- stable" sets in the non-equilibrium case may move as time evolves. We formalize this concept by relying on the theory of coherent sets, based on this we derive finite-time non-stationary Markov state models, and illustrate the concept and its main differences to equilibrium Markov state modeling on simple, one-dimensional examples.}, language = {en} } @article{DjurdjevacConradWeberSchuette2016, author = {Djurdjevac Conrad, Natasa and Weber, Marcus and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof}, title = {Finding dominant structures of nonreversible Markov processes}, volume = {14}, journal = {Multiscale Modeling and Simulation}, number = {4}, doi = {10.1137/15M1032272}, pages = {1319 -- 1340}, year = {2016}, language = {en} } @misc{GuptaRoeblitzKrauseetal.2013, author = {Gupta, Pooja and R{\"o}blitz, Susanna and Krause, Carola and Knaus, Petra and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof}, title = {Mathematical modeling of the Smad and Non-Smad BMP signaling pathways in context of cell density}, journal = {Computational Models in biology and medicine, 2013, Dresden, Germany}, year = {2013}, language = {en} } @inproceedings{GuptaKrauseRikeitetal.2014, author = {Gupta, Pooja and Krause, Carola and Rikeit, Paul and R{\"o}blitz, Susanna and Knaus, Petra and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof}, title = {Modeling of the BMP mediated co-regulation of the Smad and Non-Smad pathways in the context of cell density}, booktitle = {10th International BMP conference, 2014, Berlin, Germany}, year = {2014}, language = {en} } @article{GulSchuetteBernhard2016, author = {Gul, Raheem and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof and Bernhard, Stefan}, title = {Mathematical modeling and sensitivity analysis of arterial anastomosis in arm arteries}, journal = {Applied Mathematical Modelling}, doi = {10.1016/j.apm.2016.03.041}, year = {2016}, language = {en} } @misc{BittracherBanischSchuette2017, author = {Bittracher, Andreas and Banisch, Ralf and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof}, title = {Data-driven Computation of Molecular Reaction Coordinates}, issn = {1438-0064}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-66179}, year = {2017}, abstract = {The identification of meaningful reaction coordinates plays a key role in the study of complex molecular systems whose essential dynamics is characterized by rare or slow transition events. In a recent publication, the authors identified a condition under which such reaction coordinates exist - the existence of a so-called transition manifold - and proposed a numerical method for their point-wise computation that relies on short bursts of MD simulations. This article represents an extension of the method towards practical applicability in computational chemistry. It describes an alternative computational scheme that instead relies on more commonly available types of simulation data, such as single long molecular trajectories, or the push-forward of arbitrary canonically-distributed point clouds. It is based on a Galerkin approximation of the transition manifold reaction coordinates, that can be tuned to individual requirements by the choice of the Galerkin ansatz functions. Moreover, we propose a ready-to-implement variant of the new scheme, that computes data-fitted, mesh-free ansatz functions directly from the available simulation data. The efficacy of the new method is demonstrated on a realistic peptide system.}, language = {en} } @phdthesis{Schuette1999, author = {Sch{\"u}tte, Christof}, title = {Conformational Dynamics: Modelling, Theory, Algorithm, and Application to Biomolecules}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-4063}, number = {SC-99-18}, year = {1999}, abstract = {The function of many important biomolecules comes from their dynamic properties and their ability to switch between different {\em conformations}. In a conformation, the large scale geometric structure of the molecule is understood to be conserved, whereas on smaller scales the system may well rotate, oscillate or fluctuate. In a recent article [J. Comp. Phys., 151,1 (1999)], the present author and coworkers demonstrated that (a) conformations can be understood as almost invariant sets of some Markov chain being defined via the Hamiltonian system governing the molecular dynamics and that (b) these sets can efficiently be computed via eigenvectors of the corresponding Markov operator. The persent manuscript reviews the mathematical modelling steps behind the novel concept, includes a rigorous analytical justification of this approach and especially of the numerical details of the algorithm, and illustrates its performance when applied to realistic molecular systems.}, language = {en} } @misc{FischerSchuetteDeuflhardetal.2001, author = {Fischer, Alexander and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof and Deuflhard, Peter and Cordes, Frank}, title = {Hierarchical Uncoupling-Coupling of Metastable Conformations}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-6296}, number = {01-03}, year = {2001}, abstract = {Uncoupling-coupling Monte Carlo (UCMC) combines uncoupling techniques for finite Markov chains with Markov chain Monte Carlo methodology. UCMC aims at avoiding the typical metastable or trapping behavior of Monte Carlo techniques. From the viewpoint of Monte Carlo, a slowly converging long-time Markov chain is replaced by a limited number of rapidly mixing short-time ones. Therefore, the state space of the chain has to be hierarchically decomposed into its metastable conformations. This is done by means of combining the technique of conformation analysis as recently introduced by the authors, and appropriate annealing strategies. We present a detailed examination of the uncoupling-coupling procedure which uncovers its theoretical background, and illustrates the hierarchical algorithmic approach. Furthermore, application of the UCMC algorithm to the \$n\$-pentane molecule allows us to discuss the effect of its crucial steps in a typical molecular scenario.}, 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} } @misc{ErnstSchuetteSigristetal.2021, author = {Ernst, Ariane and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof and Sigrist, Stephan and Winkelmann, Stefanie}, title = {Variance of filtered signals: Characterization for linear reaction networks and application to neurotransmission dynamics}, issn = {1438-0064}, doi = {10.1016/j.mbs.2021.108760}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-82674}, year = {2021}, abstract = {Neurotransmission at chemical synapses relies on the calcium-induced fusion of synaptic vesicles with the presynaptic membrane. The distance to the calcium channels determines the release probability and thereby the postsynaptic signal. Suitable models of the process need to capture both the mean and the variance observed in electrophysiological measurements of the postsynaptic current. In this work, we propose a method to directly compute the exact first- and second-order moments for signals generated by a linear reaction network under convolution with an impulse response function, rendering computationally expensive numerical simulations of the underlying stochastic counting process obsolete. We show that the autocorrelation of the process is central for the calculation of the filtered signal's second-order moments, and derive a system of PDEs for the cross-correlation functions (including the autocorrelations) of linear reaction networks with time-dependent rates. Finally, we employ our method to efficiently compare different spatial coarse graining approaches for a specific model of synaptic vesicle fusion. Beyond the application to neurotransmission processes, the developed theory can be applied to any linear reaction system that produces a filtered stochastic signal.}, language = {en} } @article{ErnstSchuetteSigristetal.2022, author = {Ernst, Ariane and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof and Sigrist, Stephan and Winkelmann, Stefanie}, title = {Variance of filtered signals: Characterization for linear reaction networks and application to neurotransmission dynamics}, volume = {343}, journal = {Mathematical Biosciences}, doi = {10.1016/j.mbs.2021.108760}, year = {2022}, abstract = {Neurotransmission at chemical synapses relies on the calcium-induced fusion of synaptic vesicles with the presynaptic membrane. The distance to the calcium channels determines the release probability and thereby the postsynaptic signal. Suitable models of the process need to capture both the mean and the variance observed in electrophysiological measurements of the postsynaptic current. In this work, we propose a method to directly compute the exact first- and second-order moments for signals generated by a linear reaction network under convolution with an impulse response function, rendering computationally expensive numerical simulations of the underlying stochastic counting process obsolete. We show that the autocorrelation of the process is central for the calculation of the filtered signal's second-order moments, and derive a system of PDEs for the cross-correlation functions (including the autocorrelations) of linear reaction networks with time-dependent rates. Finally, we employ our method to efficiently compare different spatial coarse graining approaches for a specific model of synaptic vesicle fusion. Beyond the application to neurotransmission processes, the developed theory can be applied to any linear reaction system that produces a filtered stochastic signal.}, 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} } @misc{RayThiesSunkaraetal.2021, author = {Ray, Sourav and Thies, Arne and Sunkara, Vikram and Wulkow, Hanna and Celik, {\"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}, issn = {1438-0064}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-82797}, year = {2021}, abstract = {Initiated by mathematical modelling of extracellular interactions between G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs) and ligands in normal versus diseased (inflamed) environments, we previously reported the successful design, synthesis and testing of the prototype opioid painkiller NFEPP that does not elicit adverse side effects. Uniquely, this design recognised that GPCRs function differently under pathological versus healthy conditions. We now present a novel stochastic model of GPCR function that includes intracellular dissociation of G-protein subunits and modulation of plasma membrane calcium channels associated with parameters of inflamed tissue (pH, radicals). By means of molecular dynamics simulations, we also assessed qualitative changes of the reaction rates due to additional disulfide bridges inside the GPCR binding pocket and used these rates for stochastic simulations of the corresponding reaction jump process. The modelling results were validated with in vitro experiments measuring calcium currents and G-protein activation. We found markedly reduced G-protein dissociation and calcium channel inhibition induced by NFEPP at normal pH, and enhanced constitutive G-protein activation but lower probability of ligand binding with increasing radical concentrations. These 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{MontefuscoSchuetteWinkelmann2023, author = {Montefusco, Alberto and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof and Winkelmann, Stefanie}, title = {A route to the hydrodynamic limit of a reaction-diffusion master equation using gradient structures}, volume = {83}, journal = {SIAM Journal on Applied Mathematics}, number = {2}, arxiv = {http://arxiv.org/abs/2201.02613}, doi = {10.1137/22M1488831}, pages = {837 -- 861}, year = {2023}, abstract = {The reaction-diffusion master equation (RDME) is a lattice-based stochastic model for spatially resolved cellular processes. It is often interpreted as an approximation to spatially continuous reaction-diffusion models, which, in the limit of an infinitely large population, may be described by means of reaction-diffusion partial differential equations. Analyzing and understanding the relation between different mathematical models for reaction-diffusion dynamics is a research topic of steady interest. In this work, we explore a route to the hydrodynamic limit of the RDME which uses gradient structures. Specifically, we elaborate on a method introduced in [J. Maas and A. Mielke, J. Stat. Phys., 181 (2020), pp. 2257-2303] in the context of well-mixed reaction networks by showing that, once it is complemented with an appropriate limit procedure, it can be applied to spatially extended systems with diffusion. Under the assumption of detailed balance, we write down a gradient structure for the RDME and use the method in order to produce a gradient structure for its hydrodynamic limit, namely, for the corresponding RDPDE.}, 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{BittracherMollenhauerKoltaietal.2023, author = {Bittracher, Andreas and Mollenhauer, Mattes and Koltai, P{\´e}ter and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof}, title = {Optimal Reaction Coordinates: Variational Characterization and Sparse Computation}, volume = {21}, journal = {Multiscale Modelling \& Simulation}, number = {2}, arxiv = {http://arxiv.org/abs/2107.10158}, doi = {10.1137/21M1448367}, pages = {449 -- 488}, year = {2023}, abstract = {Reaction coordinates (RCs) are indicators of hidden, low-dimensional mechanisms that govern the long-term behavior of high-dimensional stochastic processes. We present a novel and general variational characterization of optimal RCs and provide conditions for their existence. Optimal RCs are minimizers of a certain loss function, and reduced models based on them guarantee a good approximation of the statistical long-term properties of the original high-dimensional process. We show that for slow-fast systems, metastable systems, and other systems with known good RCs, the novel theory reproduces previous insight. Remarkably, for reversible systems, the numerical effort required to evaluate the loss function scales only with the variability of the underlying, low-dimensional mechanism, and not with that of the full system. The theory provided lays the foundation for an efficient and data-sparse computation of RCs via modern machine learning techniques.}, language = {en} } @article{MollenhauerKlusSchuetteetal.2022, author = {Mollenhauer, Mattes and Klus, Stefan and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof and Koltai, P{\´e}ter}, title = {Kernel Autocovariance Operators of Stationary Processes: Estimation and Convergence}, volume = {23}, journal = {Journal of Machine Learning Research}, number = {327}, arxiv = {http://arxiv.org/abs/2004.00891}, pages = {1 -- 34}, year = {2022}, abstract = {We consider autocovariance operators of a stationary stochastic process on a Polish space that is embedded into a reproducing kernel Hilbert space. We investigate how empirical estimates of these operators converge along realizations of the process under various conditions. In particular, we examine ergodic and strongly mixing processes and obtain several asymptotic results as well as finite sample error bounds. We provide applications of our theory in terms of consistency results for kernel PCA with dependent data and the conditional mean embedding of transition probabilities. Finally, we use our approach to examine the nonparametric estimation of Markov transition operators and highlight how our theory can give a consistency analysis for a large family of spectral analysis methods including kernel-based dynamic mode decomposition.}, language = {en} } @misc{HelfmannDjurdjevacConradLorenzSpreenetal.2023, author = {Helfmann, Luzie and Djurdjevac Conrad, Natasa and Lorenz-Spreen, Philipp and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof}, title = {Supplementary code for the paper Modelling opinion dynamics under the impact of influencer and media strategies}, doi = {10.12752/9267}, year = {2023}, abstract = {This repository contains the Julia code accompanying the paper "Modelling opinion dynamics under the impact of influencer and media strategies", Scientific Reports, Vol.13, p. 19375, 2023.}, language = {en} } @misc{Secker2023, author = {Secker, Christopher}, title = {Novel multi-objective affinity approach allows to identify pH-specific μ-opioid receptor agonists (Dataset)}, doi = {10.12752/9622}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0297-zib-96220}, year = {2023}, abstract = {Virtual Screening Dataset for the paper "Novel multi-objective affinity approach allows to identify pH-specific μ-opioid receptor agonists" by Secker et al. (https://doi.org/10.1186/s13321-023-00746-4)}, language = {en} } @article{WehlitzSadeghiMontefuscoetal.2025, author = {Wehlitz, Nathalie and Sadeghi, Mohsen and Montefusco, Alberto and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof and Pavliotis, Grigorios A. and Winkelmann, Stefanie}, title = {Approximating particle-based clustering dynamics by stochastic PDEs}, volume = {24}, journal = {SIAM Journal on Applied Dynamical Systems}, number = {2}, arxiv = {http://arxiv.org/abs/2407.18952}, doi = {10.1137/24M1676661}, pages = {1231 -- 1250}, year = {2025}, abstract = {This work proposes stochastic partial differential equations (SPDEs) as a practical tool to replicate clustering effects of more detailed particle-based dynamics. Inspired by membrane mediated receptor dynamics on cell surfaces, we formulate a stochastic particle-based model for diffusion and pairwise interaction of particles, leading to intriguing clustering phenomena. Employing numerical simulation and cluster detection methods, we explore the approximation of the particle-based clustering dynamics through mean-field approaches. We find that SPDEs successfully reproduce spatiotemporal clustering dynamics, not only in the initial cluster formation period, but also on longer time scales where the successive merging of clusters cannot be tracked by deterministic mean-field models. The computational efficiency of the SPDE approach allows us to generate extensive statistical data for parameter estimation in a simpler model that uses a Markov jump process to capture the temporal evolution of the cluster number.}, 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{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{RiberaBorrellRichterSchuette2025, author = {Ribera Borrell, Enric and Richter, Lorenz and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof}, title = {Reinforcement Learning with Random Time Horizons}, volume = {267}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the 42nd International Conference on Machine Learning}, arxiv = {http://arxiv.org/abs/2506.00962}, pages = {5101 -- 5123}, year = {2025}, language = {en} } @misc{RiberaBorrellQuerRichteretal.2021, author = {Ribera Borrell, Enric and Quer, Jannes and Richter, Lorenz and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof}, title = {Improving control based importance sampling strategies for metastable diffusions via adapted metadynamics}, issn = {1438-0064}, year = {2021}, abstract = {Sampling rare events in metastable dynamical systems is often a computationally expensive task and one needs to resort to enhanced sampling methods such as importance sampling. Since we can formulate the problem of finding optimal importance sampling controls as a stochastic optimization problem, this then brings additional numerical challenges and the convergence of corresponding algorithms might as well suffer from metastabilty. In this article we address this issue by combining systematic control approaches with the heuristic adaptive metadynamics method. Crucially, we approximate the importance sampling control by a neural network, which makes the algorithm in principle feasible for high dimensional applications. We can numerically demonstrate in relevant metastable problems that our algorithm is more effective than previous attempts and that only the combination of the two approaches leads to a satisfying convergence and therefore to an efficient sampling in certain metastable settings.}, language = {en} } @article{SchuetteKlusHartmann2023, author = {Sch{\"u}tte, Christof and Klus, Stefan and Hartmann, Carsten}, title = {Overcoming the Timescale Barrier in Molecular Dynamics: Transfer Operators, Variational Principles, and Machine Learning}, volume = {32}, journal = {Acta Numerica}, doi = {10.1017/S0962492923000016}, pages = {517 -- 673}, year = {2023}, abstract = {One of the main challenges in molecular dynamics is overcoming the 'timescale barrier': in many realistic molecular systems, biologically important rare transitions occur on timescales that are not accessible to direct numerical simulation, even on the largest or specifically dedicated supercomputers. This article discusses how to circumvent the timescale barrier by a collection of transfer operator-based techniques that have emerged from dynamical systems theory, numerical mathematics and machine learning over the last two decades. We will focus on how transfer operators can be used to approximate the dynamical behaviour on long timescales, review the introduction of this approach into molecular dynamics, and outline the respective theory, as well as the algorithmic development, from the early numerics-based methods, via variational reformulations, to modern data-based techniques utilizing and improving concepts from machine learning. Furthermore, its relation to rare event simulation techniques will be explained, revealing a broad equivalence of variational principles for long-time quantities in molecular dynamics. The article will mainly take a mathematical perspective and will leave the application to real-world molecular systems to the more than 1000 research articles already written on this subject.}, language = {en} } @article{MontefuscoHelfmannOkunolaetal.2024, author = {Montefusco, Alberto and Helfmann, Luzie and Okunola, Toluwani and Winkelmann, Stefanie and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof}, title = {Partial mean-field model for neurotransmission dynamics}, volume = {369}, journal = {Mathematical Biosciences}, arxiv = {http://arxiv.org/abs/2307.01737}, doi = {10.1016/j.mbs.2024.109143}, year = {2024}, abstract = {This article addresses reaction networks in which spatial and stochastic effects are of crucial importance. For such systems, particle-based models allow us to describe all microscopic details with high accuracy. However, they suffer from computational inefficiency if particle numbers and density get too large. Alternative coarse-grained-resolution models reduce computational effort tremendously, e.g., by replacing the particle distribution by a continuous concentration field governed by reaction-diffusion PDEs. We demonstrate how models on the different resolution levels can be combined into hybrid models that seamlessly combine the best of both worlds, describing molecular species with large copy numbers by macroscopic equations with spatial resolution while keeping the stochastic-spatial particle-based resolution level for the species with low copy numbers. To this end, we introduce a simple particle-based model for the binding dynamics of ions and vesicles at the heart of the neurotransmission process. Within this framework, we derive a novel hybrid model and present results from numerical experiments which demonstrate that the hybrid model allows for an accurate approximation of the full particle-based model in realistic scenarios.}, language = {en} } @article{NiemannKlusConradetal.2024, author = {Niemann, Jan-Hendrik and Klus, Stefan and Conrad, Natasa Djurdjevac and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof}, title = {Koopman-Based Surrogate Models for Multi-Objective Optimization of Agent-Based Systems}, volume = {460}, journal = {Physica D: Nonlinear Phenomena}, arxiv = {http://arxiv.org/abs/2306.17666}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physd.2024.134052}, pages = {134052}, year = {2024}, abstract = {Agent-based models (ABMs) provide an intuitive and powerful framework for studying social dynamics by modeling the interactions of individuals from the perspective of each individual. In addition to simulating and forecasting the dynamics of ABMs, the demand to solve optimization problems to support, for example, decision-making processes naturally arises. Most ABMs, however, are non-deterministic, high-dimensional dynamical systems, so objectives defined in terms of their behavior are computationally expensive. In particular, if the number of agents is large, evaluating the objective functions often becomes prohibitively time-consuming. We consider data-driven reduced models based on the Koopman generator to enable the efficient solution of multi-objective optimization problems involving ABMs. In a first step, we show how to obtain data-driven reduced models of non-deterministic dynamical systems (such as ABMs) that depend on potentially nonlinear control inputs. We then use them in the second step as surrogate models to solve multi-objective optimal control problems. We first illustrate our approach using the example of a voter model, where we compute optimal controls to steer the agents to a predetermined majority, and then using the example of an epidemic ABM, where we compute optimal containment strategies in a prototypical situation. We demonstrate that the surrogate models effectively approximate the Pareto-optimal points of the ABM dynamics by comparing the surrogate-based results with test points, where the objectives are evaluated using the ABM. Our results show that when objectives are defined by the dynamic behavior of ABMs, data-driven surrogate models support or even enable the solution of multi-objective optimization problems.}, language = {en} } @article{DjurdjevacConradChemnitzKostreetal.2024, author = {Djurdjevac Conrad, Natasa and Chemnitz, Robin and Kostre, Margarita and Schweigart, Fleur and Fless, Friederike and Sch{\"u}tte, Christof and Ducke, Benjamin}, title = {A Mathematical perspective on Romanisation: Modelling the Roman road activation process in ancient Tunisia}, volume = {19}, journal = {PLoS ONE}, number = {9}, doi = {10.1371/journal.pone.0309752}, year = {2024}, abstract = {Romanisation is a multi-faceted historical phenomenon with profound and lasting cultural impact on the ancient world. In the modern-day territory of Tunisia, this is particularly manifest during the first four centuries AD, under the reign of the Roman Empire. We derive a reduced, operational concept of Romanisation as a cultural diffusion process that is observable in the archaeological remains of the Roman era settlement system. We then introduce a novel mathematical model that computes spatio-temporal approximations for the Romanisation of the settlement system. The model is based on the concept of temporal road activation and makes minimal assumptions regarding input data quality. The results of our study contribute to the understanding of the time dynamics of the region's road network, under the influence of Romanisation. Our model can be applied in similar archaeological research scenarios, to generate spatio-temporal backbones for the analysis of otherwise intractably complex social processes.}, language = {en} }