6 Mathematical background

6.1 Decay models

PyFDAP supports two different decay models: Linear- and non-linear decay. Linear decay is given by the ordinary differential equation (ODE)

dc-
 dt = - kc

where c is the concentration of a molecule and k is the rate constant of the decay. Since we assume that the level of fluorescence is proportional to the molecule concentration, we can substitute the concentration with fluorescence intensity. Solving this ODE results in

c(t) = c0e- kt + y0

where c(t) is the concentration of a molecule at time t, c(0) = c0 is the concentration at time t = 0, and y0 is the baseline fluorescence intensity to which the population of decaying molecules converges. In terms of fluorescence intensity, y0 resembles the baseline level of noise and autofluorescence. From k we can then compute the molecule’s half-life τ by

τ = ln(2).
      k

Some molecules are proposed to decay non-linearly (Eldar et al.2003), and we have

dc
---= - kcn
dt

where n > 1 is the degree of non-linearity and k is the decay rate constant of the molecule. We can solve this ODE and obtain the power-law solution

      ( 1-n           )11-n
c(t) = c0   - kt(1 - n)     + y0.

For the case of a non-linear decay model, we compute the molecule’s half-life by

     (2n- 1 - 1)c1-n
τ =  ----------0--.
        k(n- 1)

6.2 Estimation of initial guesses and bounds for variables

PyFDAP offers multiple options to calculate initial guesses and bounds for variables that are used by the fitting algorithms to obtain biologically reasonable estimates based on noise, pre-conversion, and background measurements (see Section 4).

Initial guess for the estimation of c0: A good estimate for c0 is the difference between the pre-conversion and the first post-conversion image, i.e.

Ipost(tstart) - Ipre,

where Ipost and Ipre are the fluorescence intensities after and before photoconversion, respectively, and tstart is the time at which the first image was taken.

Initial guess for the estimation of the baseline y0: PyFDAP offers the two presets Ipost(tstart) and Ipost(tend), where tend is the time at which the last image was taken and where protein decay should be almost complete. Our tests showed that the optimization algorithms worked well if y0,opt is approached from above using Ipost(tstart) as the initial guess for y0.

Estimation of the lower bound for the baseline y0: This estimate is a crucial part of the fitting process. PyFDAP offers several algorithms to perform this estimation based on the amount and quality of the data available.

6.3 Optimization algorithms

PyFDAP comes with a wide selection of optimization algorithms taken from the SciPy optimize package (http://docs.scipy.org/doc/scipy/reference/optimize.html) (Nelder and Mead (1965); Polak and Ribière (1969); Broyden (1970); Goldfarb (1970); Fletcher (1970); Shanno (1970); Nash (1984); Kraft (1988); Byrd et al. (1995); Nocedal and Wright (2006)). A list of all optimization algorithms available in PyFDAP can be found in Table 3.


Bounded methods
Unbounded methods

Method

Name in PyFDAP Type

Reference





Limited-memory BFGS

L-BFGS-B quasi-Newton

Byrd et al. (1995)





Truncated Newton Conjugate

TNC Newton conjugate

Nash (1984)





Sequential Least Squares Programming

SLSQP sequential quadratic

Kraft (1988)





Brute force

brute brute force

SciPy Reference Guide









Nelder-Mead

Nelder-Mead simplex

Nelder and Mead (1965)





Broyden-Fletcher-Goldfarb-Shanno

BFGS quasi-Newton

Broyden (1970); Goldfarb (1970); Fletcher (1970); Shanno (1970)





Nonlinear Conjugate Gradient

CG Newton conjugate

Polak and Ribière (1969)


Table 3: List of optimization algorithms in PyFDAP.

6.4 Statistics

PyFDAP can average over multiple fits from different embryo objects (FDAP measurements). Details of how to select fits for averaging are described in Section 3.3.

PyFDAP averages the optimal parameters for k, y0, c0, and protein half-lives τ through an arithmetic mean. For example, the average decay rate constant k is obtained by

    m∑˜
       ki
¯k = i=1---,
     m˜

where m˜ is the number of fits to be averaged. The average half-life τ can be computed in two ways resulting in different average half-lives. PyFDAP computes the average half-life τ through the arithmetic mean given by

    ∑˜m
       τi
¯τ = i=1--.
     m˜

For the linear decay model, this yields

       ˜m
    1-∑   ln(2)
¯τ = ˜m      ki  ,
       i=1
(1)

and in the case of the non-linear decay model we obtain

     1-∑˜m  (2n--1 --1)c10-,in
τ¯=  ˜m       ki(n - 1)  .
       i=1
(2)

However, computing the average half-life τ directly from the average decay rate k yields

¯τ = -ln(2)-,
    1-∑˜m
    ˜m    ki
      i=1
(3)

for the linear decay model and

                m˜
    (2n-1 - 1) 1-∑ c1- n
    ----------˜m-i=1--0,i-
¯τ =    1 m∑˜            .
       ˜m-   ki(n - 1)
         i=1
(4)

in case of the non-linear decay model. It is obvious that equations 1 and 3 as well as equations 2 and 4 do not produce the same half-lives, and the user needs to decide which way of half-life computation is appropriate for the application.

PyFDAP can produce different error bar plots for each averaged region. Clicking on Statistics Plotting Plot average fit will result in a plot in which each average data point c(tj) is computed as the arithmetic mean

         ∑˜m
¯c(tj) = 1-   ci(tj).
       ˜m i=1

Error bars are computed as the standard deviation for each time tj. Clicking on Statistics Plotting Plot normed average fit returns a plot in which all data points are normalized between values of 0 and 1. The normalization is performed by subtracting the baseline value y0,i from each data point and dividing the result by c0,i, i.e.

        ci(tj)- y0,i
˜ci(tj) = ----------,
            c0,i

where c˜i(tj) is the normalized data point at time tj. This normalization facilitates the comparison of decay curve shapes, but it substantially changes the meaning of the error bars. Since all data series are pinned to a value of 1 at their first time point, the standard deviation vanishes for this data point. The following data points will generally produce increasing error bars since the decay curves generally diverge. The length of the normalized error bars can be interpreted as the extent to which the decay curves diverge throughout the experiments.