Modeling cell-specific dynamics and regulation of the common gamma chain cytokines.

The γ-chain receptor dimerizes with complexes of the cytokines interleukin-2 (IL-2), IL-4, IL-7, IL-9, IL-15, and IL-21 and their corresponding "private" receptors. These cytokines have existing uses and future potential as immune therapies because of their ability to regulate the abundance and function of specific immune cell populations. Here, we build a binding reaction model for the ligand-receptor interactions of common γ-chain cytokines, which includes receptor trafficking dynamics, enabling quantitative predictions of cell-type-specific response to natural and engineered cytokines.

Predicting Host Phenotype Based on Gut Microbiome Using a Convolutional Neural Network Approach.

Accurate prediction of the host phenotypes from a microbial sample and identification of the associated microbial markers are important in understanding the impact of the microbiome on the pathogenesis and progression of various diseases within the host. A deep learning tool, PopPhy-CNN, has been developed for the task of predicting host phenotypes using a convolutional neural network (CNN). By representing samples as annotated taxonomic trees and further representing these trees as matrices, PopPhy-CNN utilizes the CNN's innate ability to explore locally similar microbes on the taxonomic tree.