USI Lugano Campus, room SI-007, Informatics building
12:00 - 12:45 - december 20. 

Prof Dr. Meher K. Prakash, Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research JNCASR, Bangalore, India

Title: Interpreting Deep Mutational Scans

Abstract:
Artificial intelligence (AI) based methods for mutational effects predictions are improving in accuracy, because of the exhaustive experimental data they are trained on, and advances in algorithms. As the prediction quality improves, the next natural question to ask countering the ‘black box’ image of AI is if the predictions can be interpreted. We applied one of the approaches developed in the field of explainable AI, to decipher the factors contributing to the changes in cellular fitness and protein solubility arising from mutations. Juxtaposing the two observations and focusing on the individual factors uncovers the contributions and quantifies the intuitions about how different factors such as conservation, distance from the catalytic site affect fitness and solubility. Embedding interpretability along with the prediction algorithms will enable transparency and inspire confidence into models as well as contribute to the understanding of how mutations affect proteins.

Biography:
Prof. Dr. Meher K. Prakash is an Assistant Professor at Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research JNCASR, Bangalore, India. He completed his Ph.D. at the California Institute of Technology of Pasadena, CA, US and he is currently supervising his own group at Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research JNCASR in India. His research interests are advanced molecular dynamics simulations, mathematical modelling of biological systems and development of new clinical strategies for cancer treatment.