Leveraging dynamic stability to infer regulation in protein-protein interaction networks: A study of infectious vulnerability in COPD.

The fourth leading cause of death in the US, Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) is punctuated by frequent viral and bacterial infections causing severe acute exacerbations (AECOPD) and increased mortality. In previous work we have shown that altered immune cell signaling may confer increased and persistent susceptibility to infection. Here we continue this investigation by conducting broad-spectrum proteomic profiling of circulating white blood cells to assemble an empirical protein-protein interaction network associated with frequency of infectious exacerbation.

Automated strength-interval curve generation using actors.

Background And Objective: Strength-interval (SI) curves are used by physiologists to quantify the response of excitable tissue as a function of the strength and timing of an electrical stimulus. In the context of cardiac electrophysiology, SI curves characterize the refractoriness of cardiac tissue as a function of inter-stimulus interval length. Although conventionally collected experimentally, this type of information can now more conveniently be obtained through computational simulation.