Alberto Calderone

Alberto Calderone

Simulation of post-prandial pharmacokinetics, such as muscle protein synthesis (MPS) through mTORC1 and insulin-induced glucose uptake, is often challenging due to the computational intensity of the multi-compartmental approach. In this study, I introduce an in silico metabolic simulator that uses bi-compartmental Bateman kinetic processes, gamma-variate distributions, and finite state machine reasoning to solve temporal differential equations instantaneously, generating metabolic curves and predictions depending on input meals. The novel underlying algorithm was custom-built entirely independent of third-party libraries or external services. This original computational engine, bridging the gap between academia and the digital health sector, is integrated within a web dashboard and provided as a service via REST APIs. The average response time is approximately 135 ms with a maximum below 750 ms. The multi-dimensional model was calibrated using a Landmark Validation approach across diverse dietary conditions (Whey Protein, mixed meal, OGTT) and optimized via Grid Search. Ultimately, the system achieved a global physiologically optimal Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE) of $\sim18\%$ while maintaining an algorithmic complexity of $O(n \log n)$.

Alberto Calderone

The amount of scientific papers published every day is daunting and constantly increasing. Keeping up with literature represents a challenge. If one wants to start exploring new topics it is hard to have a big picture without reading lots of articles. Furthermore, as one reads through literature, making mental connections is crucial to ask new questions which might lead to discoveries. In this work, I present a web tool which uses a Text Mining strategy to transform large collections of unstructured biomedical articles into structured data. Generated results give a quick overview on complex topics which can possibly suggest not explicitly reported information. In particular, I show two Data Science analyses. First, I present a literature based rare diseases network build using this tool in the hope that it will help clarify some aspects of these less popular pathologies. Secondly, I show how a literature based analysis conducted with PubSqueezer results allows to describe known facts about SARS-CoV-2. In one sentence, data generated with PubSqueezer make it easy to use scientific literate in any computational analysis such as machine learning, natural language processing etc. Availability: http://www.pubsqueezer.com

Alberto Calderone

Natural languages are complexly structured entities. They exhibit characterising regularities that can be exploited to link them one another. In this work, I compare two morphological aspects of languages: Written Patterns and Sentence Structure. I show how languages spontaneously group by similarity in both analyses and derive an average language distance. Finally, exploiting Sentence Structure I developed an Artificial Neural Network capable of distinguishing languages suggesting that not only word roots but also grammatical sentence structure is a characterising trait which alone suffice to identify them.

Alberto Calderone, Gianni Cesareni

Background: Networks in different domains are characterized by similar global characteristics while differing in local structures. To further extend this concept, we investigated network regularities on a fine scale in order to examine the functional impact of recurring motifs in signed oriented biological networks. In this work we generalize to signaling net works some considerations made on feedback and feed forward loops and extend them by adding a close scrutiny of Linear Triplets, which have not yet been investigate in detail. Results: We studied the role of triplets, either open or closed (Loops or linear events) by enumerating them in different biological signaling networks and by comparing their significance profiles. We compared different data sources and investigated the fine topology of protein networks representing causal relationships based on transcriptional control, phosphorylation, ubiquitination and binding. Not only were we able to generalize findings that have already been reported but we also highlighted a connection between relative motif abundance and node function. Furthermore, by analyzing for the first time Linear Triplets, we highlighted the relative importance of nodes sitting in specific positions in closed signaling triplets. Finally, we tried to apply machine learning to show that a combination of motifs features can be used to derive node function. Availability: The triplets counter used for this work is available as a Cytoscape App and as a standalone command line Java application. http://apps.cytoscape.org/apps/counttriplets Keywords: Graph theory, graph analysis, graph topology, machine learning, cytoscape