Intranasal administration of Acinetobacter lwoffii in a murine model of asthma induces IL-6-mediated protection associated with cecal microbiota changes.

Background: Early-life exposure to certain environmental bacteria including Acinetobacter lwoffii (AL) has been implicated in protection from chronic inflammatory diseases including asthma later in life. However, the underlying mechanisms at the immune-microbe interface remain largely unknown.

Methods: The effects of repeated intranasal AL exposure on local and systemic innate immune responses were investigated in wild-type and Il6 , Il10 , and Il17 mice exposed to ovalbumin-induced allergic airway inflammation.

Modeling Variability in Populations of Cells Using Approximated Multivariate Distributions.

We are interested in studying the evolution of large homogeneous populations of cells, where each cell is assumed to be composed of a group of biological players (species) whose dynamics is governed by a complex biological pathway, identical for all cells. Modeling the inherent variability of the species concentrations in different cells is crucial to understand the dynamics of the population. In this work, we focus on handling this variability by modeling each species by a random variable that evolves over time.

Abstracting the dynamics of biological pathways using information theory: a case study of apoptosis pathway.

Motivation: Quantitative models are increasingly used in systems biology. Usually, these quantitative models involve many molecular species and their associated reactions. When simulating a tissue with thousands of cells, using these large models becomes computationally and time limiting.